In Ecuador, cocoa farmers define sustainability through more than production practices and environmental protection. Their priorities also include community cooperation, cultural identity, fair working conditions and personal security. Drawing on participatory research in Naranjal, in the coastal province of Guayas, and Tena, in the Amazonian province of Napo, this research article examines how smallholder cocoa-producing communities understand sustainability and how their perspectives compare with standardized assessment frameworks.

Between November 2022 and January 2023, researchers worked with 43 farmers across the two regions using Photovoice, a participatory method that combines photography, personal interpretation and group discussion. Participants identified, defined and rated 60 sustainability criteria, including water protection, the preservation of minga practices (collective community work), family farm prosperity, food sovereignty and ancestral knowledge. The research team compared these community-defined priorities with a standardized framework containing 35 indicators, using text similarity analysis and independent expert assessments to identify gaps in representation.

The findings suggest that technical and environmental priorities, such as water management and organic fertilization, align relatively well with existing indicators. However, social, governance-related and biocultural concerns are inadequately represented, particularly among Amazonian communities. Regional differences also emerged: Amazonian participants generally rated shared sustainability criteria more positively, reflecting strong reciprocal institutions and community networks, while coastal farmers highlighted concerns about public services, civil security and justice. The authors argue that sustainability assessments and cocoa policies should enable farming communities to define the criteria that matter to them, rather than limiting participation to consultation on predetermined indicators. The findings offer methodological insights for developing more context-sensitive and inclusive approaches to agricultural sustainability assessment.