Entry: Chow Boi Yee

Greetings. My name is Chow Boi Yee, and I have been working in the cocoa and confectionery industry for many years. Over the last three days, I was in Vietnam touring some of the sustainable cocoa program sites. It was a very pleasant experience for me, after having last been to Vietnam cocoa fields some three years ago. I could not believe what I saw, practically all the projections – hectareage, volume, quality - are all falling into place. I saw pods all over the collecting stations and the fermented boxes were full of beans.

Collecting stations displayed signboards of prices of beans and pods. The beans on the drying yards were clean and practically no wastes. All the best practices are being implemented. The previously new planting areas are coming into production, and production is up by leaps and bound, with the latest number touching 1,200 tonnes beans by year end. I heard that some of the production is being used as high quality, fully fermented beans to produce liquor. We also visited the Success Alliance office where Lam and Hyuen briefed us with confidence on the work in Dak Lak. Looks like more happenings to happen. Great stuff!!

So I want to congratulate World Cocoa Foundation and Mars for having the vision, the courage, and the patience to do origin development work in Vietnam 13 year ago, despite all odds. This is a great story.

Looking back, I think the success comes about because all the vital ingredients are in place: the leaders (World Cocoa Foundation and Mars) and the technical experts (David Lim, Smilja Lambert), the local committed personnel (Dr Phuoc, Lam, provincial government), the right technology (Best practice cocoa from agronomy, genetics to fermentation), the funding (World Cocoa Foundation, USAID, USDA), the scaling up enabler (Success Alliance), the traders to provide price discovery and logistics support (Cargill, Armajaro, Olam) and last but not least - the entrepreneurial farmers. If anyone of those ingredients had been missing, I dare say we would not see today's success. The other fortunate aspect is the relatively low volatility of cocoa prices - compared to coffee, fruits, cashews, and pepper. Many farmers are happy that cocoa helps to mitigate the lower prices of other commodities.

I hope that WCF will continue with their support for this important initiative in Vietnam. Keep up the great work!!

All the best,

ChowBoi

Entry: Dr Pham Hong Duc Phuoc, Nong Lam University HCMC and Tracey Duffey, World Cocoa Foundation

In the early stages of the Vietnam cocoa program, it was sometimes difficult to convince Vietnamese farmers of the value of planting cocoa on their farms. Today, the situation is quite different as farmers are pleased with the added income from harvested cocoa. The Ministry of Agriculture (MARD) supports farmer extension activities every year, in addition to some private companies who are selling seedlings and fertilizers on credit to farmers. The Trong Duc Company has established a farm credit program, which has resulted in the planting of some 600 hectares of cocoa.

According to the data source of the Provincial Agriculture Department, there is now a total of 11,668 hectares of cocoa trees planted in the country since 2007. The dried cocoa bean quantity is about 1,200 tonnes and supports about 30,000 households. These numbers are still small compared to other countries, but the growth is strong. In 2007, cocoa production was just only 300 tons compared to roughly 1,200 tons today, with estimates for 3,600 tons in 2009.

Another interesting aspect of cocoa growing in Vietnam is that the beans are fermented. Farmers are following a proper fermentation procedure which includes 7-9 days for pod storage, 5-6 days for fermentation, followed by sun drying. International trading companies have established buying stations in several sites and some local chocolate producers also buy beans. The World Cocoa Foundation and Nong Lam University are pleased to be working together and in cooperation with our member companies and partners to help support sustainable cocoa efforts in Vietnam.

Photo: Drying cocoa at a farmer fermentary in Ben Tre Province.

Entry: Bill Guyton, World Cocoa Foundation and Stephan Weise, STCP

Earlier this week, we received great news that Dr. Sonii David of the Sustainable Tree Crops Program (STCP) was recognized for her work on “Video Viewing Clubs” in West Africa. We congratulate Sonii, the STCP Ghana team, our local collaborators in CRIG, Stratcom Africa, ANS Media and MOFA, and the FFS farmer video crew in Ghana. We also would like to acknowledge the contribution of CABI Bioscience in initiating the participatory video development approach with us back in 2005. The funding support from this program is attributed to US Agency for International Development, along with World Cocoa Foundation members: SunSpired, Nestle, and Mars Inc.

Here is a message received by IITA Director General (Dr. Peter Hartmann) by Dr. Ren Wang, CGIAR Director (Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research):

I am delighted to inform you that IITA's nomination for the work of the Sustainable Tree Crops Program led by Dr. Sonii David on 'Videos and Guidebooks for Cocoa Farmers in Ghana and usage of Video Viewing Clubs' has been selected as the winner for the CGIAR Science Awards 2008 - Outstanding Communications category.

A panel of three judges carefully reviewed and evaluated each entry.
The panelists' decisions were unanimous. All were extremely impressed with the program and its impact on the livelihoods of farmers, as well as with the creative communications products, methodologies and concepts developed to support the training of farmers. Notably, the participation of farmers in the making of the videos and guidebooks and the establishment of Video Viewing Clubs as a means to effectively demonstrate new techniques to farmer groups are seen as truly promising communications initiatives to improve technology transfer to farmers in rural settings.

The award will be presented on Tuesday, December 2nd, during AGM08 at the Joachim Chissano International Conference Center in Maputo, Mozambique.

Please convey our congratulations to Dr. Sonii David, the primary nominee on the submission.

Blog Entry: Robert Peck

Last week I visited Compañia Nacional de Chocolates and Casa Luker, two of our Members based in Colombia. I travelled to the city of Manizales, which is world known for its proximity to Colombia’s most important coffee growing region (particularly the municipalities of Chinchina and Palestina).

The highlight of the trip was the visit to Casa Luker’s research farm, Granja Luker. Casa Luker has had this facility for nearly 46 years with the purpose of conducting farm-level investigation, field trials to incorporate good agricultural practices and different diversification systems to increase farm productivity. It was planned as a place where cocoa farmers could visit to get practical training in ways to improve their farming skills. During this time, approximately 40,000 farmers, agronomists and technicians have visited Granja Luker and participated in some sort of training. Hopefully the vast majority of these visitors have improved their farms by adopting lessons learned.

In the demonstrative plot above, farmers are able to observe what a well managed multi-crop farm should look like. The plantains provide shade to the cocoa tree for the first 3-4 years and equally important a positive cash flow for this period while the cocoa trees are not producing any pods. In the picture you may also observe a cocoa crop where trees are well pruned, tree height is no higher than 6-7 feet and no incidence of diseases. After the plantains are removed, the cocoa crop should be producing pods and be the main source of income for the farmer. By then, the timber trees start to provide shade to the cocoa trees and equally important, 15-20 years later the harvested wood will provide a significant amount of additional income to the farmer.

From left to right: Pedro Castellanos (Casa Luker), myself, Bernardo Saenz (National Cocoa Council) and Alberto Agudelo (Casa Luker).

And finally, a special acknowledgment to Francisco Gomez for the invitation to visit the Granja Luker and the continuous support to WCF.

Entry: Bill Guyton

Today I read the first report issued by the International Cocoa Verification Board (ICVB) which provides an intensive assessment of data collected on labor practices in the cocoa sector, released by the Governments of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana in June of 2008. This is part of a certification system, established under a "Protocol" agreement with U.S. Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Eliot Engel. The system was put in place to identify and address incidence of the worst forms of child labor and forced adult labor in a country’s cocoa sector.

Certification is no easy task, given that there are millions of cocoa farmers in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire, many of whom live in remote areas of their countries. Information needs to be collected and reported during periods that coincide with cropping cycles. Interviews must be tailored for local communities, who speak many different dialects.

A lot has changed since 2001, when the Protocol was signed. First of all, the Governments of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana have committed qualified people in their countries to help lead the process. The governments have executed extensive communication campaigns to educate farmers in cocoa growing communities on child labor issues. Similar coordinated programs are underway in many communities as well, supported by chocolate companies and impemented by non-government organizations (NGOs).

The World Cocoa Foundation is playing its part by supporting the Sustainable Tree Crops Program (STCP) which has reached thousands of farmers and their families in West Africa. At STCP farmer field schools, farmers not only learn how to improve their crop production and marketing, but also attend courses on farm safety, HIV/AIDS and prevention, crop diversification, farm management, and child labor prevention. Farmer who graduate from the program report income improvements of up to 50 percent of more, and practice safer farming methods.

I attended several farmer field schools in 2008 and participated in the child labor prevention courses in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. Farmers learn about the types of activites that are "acceptable" for their children to help with on farms and others that could be "unsafe or harmful". They also learn the importance of sending children to school. Farmer field schools take a "participatory" approach to instruction, in which trainers work hand-in-hand with farmers to learn about their constraints and how to solve problems.

Another program supported by the World Cocoa Foundation in West Africa is called "ECHOES" which helps provide formal and non-formal education to youth in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. This program is co-financed by World Cocoa Foundation and our members, along with the U.S. Agency for International Development. Our NGO partners in the program are Winrock and the International Foundation for Education and Self-Help (IFESH).

In addition to World Cocoa Foundation, there are many others who are working on efforts to help youth in West Africa including the International Cocoa Initiative, Care, UNICEF, Save the Children, ILO/IPEC, and many locally based NGOs in Africa.

For more information on sustainable cocoa efforts in West Africa, Latin America and Southeast Asia, please visit www.worldcocoa.org.

Entry: John Long


I recently had the opportunity to represent the World Cocoa Foundation at the International Cacao Symposium in Guatemala. Held on December 4-5, 2008, the Symposium was the first of its kind in this Central American country and was designed to promote cocoa as an important export crop and potential source of improved rural incomes. The Symposium was organized by FundaSistemas, a private foundation created by Rodolfo Paiz to extend a number of social development programs he supported when in government.

Speakers included Eduardo Somarriba of CATIE, Jesus Sanchez of FHIA, Mark Armon of OLAM, Ray Major of Artisan Confections, as well as a number of other government, industry and supply chain representatives. The presentations covered a lot of ground, ranging from the best tree species for shade management, to cocoa's role in moderating global warming, to an in-depth look at cocoa characteristics and the premium chocolate market. The World Cocoa Foundation presentation focused on its work to improve cocoa sustainability around the world, with special attention given to the opportunities in Guatemala as it works to expand cocoa production from the current 1,000 MT to 50,000 MT over the coming years.

Thanks to FundaSistemas, a number of us also had the opportunity to visit cocoa farms near Lanquin and the Don Archila Orchid Collection in Coban. I've included a couple of photos from the trip, one of discussions with local cocoa farmers, another of a model bean drying station.

Many, many thanks to Rodolfo Paiz, his daughter Lucia, Erich Eger and the other wonderful folks from FundaSistemas and ProRural for their hospitality and tremendous work to improve rural livelihoods in Guatemala!

Entry: Dr. Lyndel Meinhardt, USDA/Agricultural Research Service

Cacao, also known by its scientific name, Theobroma cacao, or the ”food of the gods” is the source of cocoa and chocolate. Cacao originated millions of years ago in the upper regions of the Amazon River Basin in what are now Peru, Ecuador, Colombia and Brazil. This area is a vast region of tropical rain forest that is rapidly disappearing as the forest is cut down to exploit the wood and transform the region into pastureland and agricultural fields for growing crops such as soybeans. Cacao in its native habitat is in danger of being destroyed or at least its genetic variability, or germplasm, lost because of this human activity. Before this happens, the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (ARS), intends to collect wild cacao plants from this region and preserve them in international collections so that they are not lost forever. For example, we know from historical records that the majority of disease resistant trees available today are descended from a few individual trees collected in Peru in the 1930s and 1940s. It is essential that we preserve more of the wild trees from their center of origin because we don’t know what important traits they may possess.

The only way to explore the region is by boat on the many rivers that feed the Amazon.

In July 2008, a team of researchers, including myself, went to Peru. A team composed of scientists from the Sustainable Perennial Crops Laboratory and the Systematic Mycology and Microbiology Laboratory at Beltsville, as well as members of the Instituto de Cultivos Tropicales (ICT), in Tarapoto, Peru, went on an expedition into the Peruvian Amazon rainforest to look for wild cacao trees. The expedition was funded by a Peruvian development project, INCARGRO and by the USDA. The purpose of this expedition was to collect wild trees, along with fungi that cause diseases that destroy cacao pods, as well as beneficial fungi that might be natural enemies of these fungal pathogens. We collected living samples from almost 200 trees in the wild. All of the materials collected, including grafted cuttings, are now preserved or are in collections that are growing at the ICT facilities in Tarapoto, Peru. The goal is to carefully evaluate all of these wild cacao plants to see if any possess traits that could be used to improve resistance to diseases or to give the chocolate industry new quality or flavor traits. The beneficial and pathogenic fungi will help us identify potential new biocontrol agents and to better understand the diseases that plague this crop.

The expedition team. Note the giant fan shaped cacao tree in the background. This was a single individual with multiple trees coming from a single root source.

Once desirable traits are identified from these collections in Peru, other scientists known as cacao plant breeders will take genes that regulate these good traits from the wild type trees and put them into varieties of cacao that can be cultivated in cacao farms. These trees will then have resistance to diseases and pests that destroy the cocoa crop and also other characteristics that will benefit the cocoa industry. Furthermore, if more funding becomes available, additional expeditions to other regions of the Amazon will be carried out to locate and preserve more of the wild cacao germplasm that might be beneficial to the future of the cocoa industry.

For a slide show with more photos of our most interesting expedition to the Amazon rainforest click on the following link.

Entry: Tracey Duffey

One of the activities that my job involves here at the World Cocoa Foundation is to plan and organize exchange visits for cocoa research scientists through the Norman E. Borlaug Fellows Program. In 2007, the World Cocoa Foundation developed a public-private partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture, Foreign Agricultural Service, Borlaug Fellows Program to jointly sponsor six to eight week fellowships for cocoa research scientists from Africa, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.

In 2008, four Cocoa Borlaug Fellows completed their fellowships from Cameroon, Ghana and Nigeria. On Friday, I attended an exceptional presentation by Joseph Anikwe before he returned to Lagos on December 20. Joseph is a Cocoa Borlaug Fellow from the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria who conducted an interesting and successful fellowship with his mentor, Dr. Aijun Zhang from the United States Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service in their facility in Beltsville, MD.

This training that Joseph received will be instrumental in the research that he will continue to conduct back home in Nigeria to identify pheromones to control the brown cocoa mirids pest in Nigeria. Joseph’s report and presentation provide photos and illustrations of this pest and his research. Thanks to the Borlaug Fellows Program, the World Cocoa Foundation will arrange for Joseph’s mentor, Dr. Zhang to visit Nigeria in 2009 to continue their research.

Through their collaboration, they hope to identify a biological control of the brown cocoa mirids through the use of pheromones so that cocoa farmers in Nigeria can be trained on how to develop local pheromone traps from used cardboard cartons and plastic bottles found at their home to trap the male mirids and control this pest from attacking their cocoa trees.

Please let us know if you are interested in learning more about Joseph’s research activities with his mentor, Dr. Zhang. We will be happy to introduce you or answer any questions. Through this partnership, the World Cocoa Foundation greatly appreciates our collaboration with USDA/FAS and USDA/ARS and the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria and our member companies including: Mars Incorporated, The Hershey Company, Blommer Chocolate, Camden International Commodities Terminal LLC, Guittard, Barry Callebaut and ADM Cocoa.