Entry: Bill Guyton and Robert Peck, World Cocoa Foundation

Manizales is a beautiful part of Colombia, best known for its coffee production. As you can see in the photo below, the rolling hillsides are covered with coffee trees which are the economic backbone for this region of Colombia.

Manizales, land of coffee

Although cocoa is not typically grown in Manizales, Robert and I are here to meet with World Cocoa Foundation member Casa Luker who support cocoa and agoforestry research at their farm less than an hour outside the city.

We are joined by Casa Luker representatives, Juan Carlos Arroyave and Alberto Agudelo for the journey. At the farm, we are introduced to Farm Manager Pedro Castellanos who brings us on a tour of the cocoa nurseries and training facilities.

Farm Manager Pedro Castellanos shows us grafted cocoa seedling.

The Casa Luker research facility has dormitories and classrooms dedicated to farmer training. Three-day training courses include topics on global marketing of cocoa, quality, planting and harvesting techniques, disease and pest management, and agroforestry.

Farmers can purchase grafted cocoa seedlings at the research facility. Most of the planting materials are Trinitario varieties, although CCN-51 is also available.

The greatest challenge to cocoa farmers in Colombia is containing diseases such as Frosty Pod Rot (monilia). During the training at Casa Luker farm, participants learn about early detection of the disease and how to contain the spread. Certain varieties of cocoa are more resistant or tolerant to the disease.

After touring the training facilities, we walked through some of the agroforestry trials. Here the researchers are determining how best to plant cocoa with other trees such as bananas, plantains, papaya, passion fruit, coffee and timber species. Most of the spacing was roughly 3 x 3 meters for the fruit trees, while timber was intercropped at 4 x 16 meters.

From a smallholder farmer perspective, this type of system makes sense, since bananas can be harvested in the first couple of years, while cocoa matures and is ready to harvest starting in 4-5 years. Timber species take longer to mature, of course.

Cocoa grows well with many different types of tree species, including papaya.

We also saw some intensive cocoa plots with trees kept at 3-4 meters high which were producing well and without disease problems.

After completing the tour at the research farm, Robert and I were invited to visit the surrounding coffee farms and to see a local coffee processing facility.

We greatly appreciate the time spent with our colleagues at Casa Luker.