My name is Tracey Duffey and I work with Bill Guyton at the World Cocoa Foundation. I help Bill and our team to coordinate World Cocoa Foundation project activities in Southeast Asia and West Africa.
I am writing to you from Vietnam where I have spent this past week attending the 3rd Annual SUCCESS Alliance International Conference. The Sustainable CoCoa Enterprise Solutions for Smallholders (SUCCESS) Alliance is a partnership that brings public, private, and non-profit organizations together to collectively address constraints and promote the sustainable cultivation and marketing of cocoa by smallholder farmers.
For those of you who may not be familiar with the SUCCESS Alliance (www.successalliance.org), it is active in Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Ecuador. The Alliance is formed by international and national governments and organizations and receives funding from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The World Cocoa Foundation and Mars, Inc. are private sector partners, and ACDI/VOCA is the implementer.
The conference brought together over 150 participants from Southeast Asia, Europe and North America including cocoa farmers, field extension agents, industry experts, and government officials to share experiences and discuss how smallholder farmers can strengthen their voice in the cocoa value chain. For many of the international and regional participants, including myself, this was the first time to visit Vietnam and their cocoa farms. It was a chance to meet many partners from the Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, and Ecuador along with representatives from several of our WCF member companies including: Armajaro, Olam, Mars, Inc., CocoaPhil, Cargill, and ED&F Man.
I was fortunate to spend the week with Dr. Phuoc and Tuyet who manage the Nong Lam University Cocoa Project sponsored by the World Cocoa Foundation. I work with Dr. Phuoc and Tuyet on a daily basis. Both are highly dedicated to helping Vietnamese cocoa farmers.
What I found most impressive during the conference was the strong presence and knowledge provided by the individual cocoa producing countries – particularly large delegations from Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia. The panel discussions covered key aspects affecting cocoa farmers including pest and disease control, farmer organizations, national efforts being made to develop their cocoa sectors, and actions by industry to further involve cocoa farmers in the value chain.
The two day conference was followed by two days of field visits where we were able to see first hand Vietnamese cocoa farming systems and meet with farmers to learn about their successes and constraints during their first 3-5 years of cocoa farming.
During the field trip, I had the chance to meet 5 cocoa farmers and their families that have received seedlings and training on how to grow cocoa through World Cocoa Foundation sponsored projects. One of the families I met is pictured here in front of their business selling seedlings:
As I am sure you can imagine, visiting the cocoa farms and hearing the farmers’ stories is what makes my job worthwhile since that is why we come to work each day with the goal to help the farmer.
During my last day, I visited a large-scale tree nursery and the clonal garden developed through our Cocoa Project with Nong Lam University. Pictured below is the entrance of the clonal garden located in Dong Nai Province. This is the largest cocoa clonal trial in the country.
My trip continues this coming week to visit cocoa farmers and partners in Indonesia.