Found in
the Andes.
A fifth-generation Ecuadorian farmer who went searching for answers — and found something ancient, extraordinary, and forgotten by the modern world.
Roots in Agriculture.
Ricky Echanique grew up in Ecuador, in a farming family whose roots ran five generations deep. He learned early that food begins with soil, and that soil begins with the people who care for it. That connection — between land, community, and nourishment — never left him.
He eventually made his way to Santa Barbara — a place that matched what he believed in. Close to the ocean, the mountains, and surrounded by agriculture, he found the inspiration to build something here. He just hadn't found it yet.
The Andean highlands of Ecuador — where Chocho has been cultivated by Andean farming communities for centuries.
When the Body Asks for Something Different.
There comes a moment for many of us when the body stops cooperating. For Ricky, a series of life events took a toll — inflammation, digestive issues, fatigue and an auto-immune disease. Western medicine didn't have solid answers.
As his frustration grew, he went looking for them somewhere else.
He traveled to the Amazon, spending time with the Shuar — an Indigenous Amazonian people with generations of deep botanical knowledge. He studied how they thought about nourishment: not as supplementation, but as relationship — between a person, the plants around them, and the land those plants grow from.
Chocho fields in the Ecuadorian Andes — grown above 10,000 ft, closer to the sun, where intense UV drives richer photosynthesis and denser nutrition.
What He Saw That No One Else Did.
On one journey from the Amazon through the Andes, he passed through the purple chocho fields — a crop the modern world had largely forgotten.
There was no meaningful supply chain for Chocho as a protein powder. No global market. Limited infrastructure. It grew remotely, harvested largely by hand by Andean farmers, consumed locally and largely unknown to modern consumers outside the region.
Most people would have taken it as a personal health discovery and moved on. Ricky saw something hiding in plain sight — in the very fields he passed through on his travels, a crop whose nutritional profile stood apart from anything else in the protein category, and a supply chain that didn't yet exist but that he — uniquely — had the relationships, heritage, and knowledge to build.
In 2019, Ricky founded Mikuna — building the first company to bring single-ingredient Chocho protein to American consumers at scale.
He didn't just launch a product. He created a new category.
Chocho returns nutrients to the soil it grows in — fixing nitrogen, sequestering carbon, and supporting healthier land for future harvests.
The protein industry needed an alternative.
Pea protein can be difficult for some to digest. Soy and whey each come with tradeoffs many consumers are looking to move past. Every major option had a compromise — and Ricky saw a gap no one was filling: a single-ingredient, whole-food protein that was genuinely clean, complete, and easy on digestion.
The answer had been growing for 2,500 years.
While the supplement industry spent years engineering better blends, an ancient crop with exceptionally high protein density for a plant food was growing quietly at altitudes above 10,000 feet in Ecuador. Not a new discovery. Not a lab creation. An ancient staple that simply needed someone to build the bridge between the most remote farms on the planet and modern consumers.
Agriculture is the lever for planetary health.
Chocho fixes nitrogen, sequesters carbon, and grows without pesticides or irrigation — returning nutrients to the soil as it grows. Ricky built Mikuna around regenerative farming practices as much as around a protein — rooted in long-term partnerships with Andean farming communities in Ecuador.
Transparency would become the standard.
Before the Consumer Reports protein powder study, before PFAS became a news story, Mikuna was commissioning third-party lab testing and making the results available to customers. Not because anyone required it — because consumers deserve to know exactly what they're consuming.
The World Takes Notice.
A new class of protein — complete, clean-label, and gentle by nature. Chocho is answering exactly what the modern consumer has been asking of this category.
Grown in the Ecuadorian Andes in partnership with Andean farming communities — the stewardship that makes Mikuna possible.
Not Just a Brand.
A (Regenerative) Movement.
Mikuna exists to prove that the best nutrition for a human body can also be the best thing for the planet and the communities that grow the food. This is not a brand position — it's an operating principle. Every decision, from ingredient sourcing to packaging to pricing, runs through this lens.
Mikuna sources Chocho through long-term partnerships with Andean farmers in Ecuador, supporting regenerative agricultural practices that return nitrogen to the soil, sequester carbon, and require no pesticides or irrigation. Certified B Corporation status reflects an independently verified commitment to balancing profit with purpose — holding Mikuna accountable to the people and the land it depends on.
This Is Just
the Beginning.
Ricky found something in the Andes that the world had been waiting for. Every scoop you take is part of that story — and the story of the farmers who grow it.
