Catherine Alston, World Cocoa Foundation
Let me introduce you to Marc. He is one of the hundreds of thousands of cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire who collectively produce 40% of the world’s cocoa. I met him for the first time while visiting the farmer organization (FO) in San Pedro that he belongs to. This particular organization provides small booklets to their members in which the FO records the quantity of bags the farmer brings in, the weight of each bag and the price paid for the cocoa. This is a great way of helping the farmer keep track of exactly how much they produce each season. That’s how I met Marc; he has the highest cocoa production of an organization that includes some 400 farmers.
Mbalo Ndiaye (Cocoa Livelihoods Program Director) and I visited Marc’s farm and it was very clear why he is so successful. The first thing we noticed is that Marc includes food crops, which can be sold within his community such as pineapple, papaya and yams. This allows him to diversify his income and have access to immediate cash from the local market. We also noticed that the cocoa trees were healthy and full of new blooms and that he had recently applied fertilizer to some of the trees.
As we walked through the farm, Marc pointed out to us the pile of cocoa pod husks from previous season. “I’ll make ash from these,” he said “and my wife can take the ash and make soap for our family”. He was very proud to show us around his farm of approximately 14 acres and his fellow farmers from the FO were excited to join us for the tour. We announced to them that their FO was selected to participate in the Cocoa Livelihoods Program and that our partners will train them on better production techniques, on how to build their farm into a business, link them to credit and input supplies and work to strengthen their FO. I look forward to returning to San Pedro at the end of the program (2014) and visiting Marc, his family and the neighboring farmers again to see how their livelihoods have changed and ask them if they are all producing more cocoa at higher quality.
