Our Story

Our journey began in 1982, when Dr. Joachim Milz, a young agronomic engineer from Germany, moved to Sapecho, Bolivia, to work with the Deutscher Entwicklungsdienst (DED), the German Development Service (now part of GIZ). During his time as a cooperation worker in the Alto Beni region, he became deeply engaged with local farming communities and met his future Bolivian wife, further solidifying his connection to the region.

While working with the El Ceibo Cooperative—then a newly formed alliance of smallholder cocoa producers—Joachim played a decisive role in establishing the first certified organic cocoa supply chain in the world, launched in 1987. He was instrumental in forging the historic partnership between El Ceibo and the German company Rapunzel Naturkost, opening international markets for Bolivian organic cocoa and laying the foundation for a global movement.

Seeking to put his agricultural knowledge into practice, Joachim purchased a farm near Sapecho, which later became ECOTOP’s learning hub. This farm served as an experimental site where he explored ways to restore soil fertility, improve productivity, enhance pruning management, and increase resilience in tropical agriculture. His first experiments involved converting a degraded orange plantation into a polyculture system with leguminous cover crops and trees. However, he soon realized that simply adding more plants was not enough—a more systematic, nature-inspired approach was needed.

Determined to find a new farming model, Joachim began collaborating with a group of pioneer Bolivian farmers, such as Walter Yana—who continues to work with ECOTOP to this day. Their interest in successional agroforestry was sparked by a visit from Swiss agroforestry expert Ernst Götsch, whose pioneering concepts on forest succession and natural self-organization left a lasting impression. Deeply inspired, the group—led by Joachim—began experimenting and adapting these ideas on their own farms, converting degraded plots into diverse, resilient agroecosystems. Together, they refined a method that mimics natural forest dynamics while enhancing agricultural productivity.

Initially referred to as successional agroforestry, the approach continued to evolve through hands-on experience and local innovation. In 2006, the name was changed to Dynamic Agroforestry (DAF) to differentiate the Bolivian movement from Ernst Götsch’s work in Brazil. Although both approaches share core ecological principles, the Bolivian trajectory developed independently and incorporated distinct methodologies adapted to its own context.

By the early 2000s, Joachim saw the need to institutionalize these practices to ensure their widespread adoption. This led him to establish ECOTOP, a platform dedicated to developing, scaling, and advocating for Dynamic Agroforestry (DAF)—a concept and name he pioneered.

Joachim’s earlier work with Cooperativa El Ceibo, Bolivia’s largest cocoa cooperative, had already been groundbreaking—resulting in the world’s first organic-certified chocolate in 1987, developed in collaboration with Rapunzel Naturkost. However, he recognized the limitations of organic certification alone. While organic farming eliminated chemical inputs, it did not necessarily regenerate ecosystems or solve productivity challenges faced by farmers.

Joachim’s vision went further:

• Moving beyond input substitution to design self-sustaining farming systems.
• Enhancing biodiversity and soil fertility instead of merely avoiding synthetic fertilizers.
• Proving that working with nature could improve both productivity and resilience.

Thus, ECOTOP’s mission was set: to develop and disseminate scalable agroforestry models that regenerate landscapes while improving farmers’ livelihoods.