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.