Survival of agro-food systems are challenging and require a fresh approach to analyse. Application of ‘productivity management’ perspective extends the conventional view of ‘productivity’ as it incorporates both ‘efficiency (creation of value)’ and ‘effectiveness (attraction of value)’ criteria into a firm’s organisational configurations (set of strategies) to achieve success. We apply a ‘fitness’ approach to examine productivity performance of 356 cacao farmers in Tabasco, Mexico. Results reveal that both ‘factors’ and ‘aspects’ of organisational configurations are significantly positively correlated with the performance indicators. Also, 14 of the 20 productivity management elements are significantly correlated with the performance indicators with three elements (‘participation in organic cacao production’, ‘farmer’s schooling’, and ‘price setting’) exerting strongest influence. Results also show that a set of fittest solutions, rather than a unique solution, exist amongst cacao farmers. The key policy implication is that both ‘efficiency’ and ‘effectiveness’ are valid strategies to cope with the challenging and competitive agro-food system environment. Policy makers should be aware of a set of solutions (fitness landscape) instead of just focusing on a unique solution.