Entry: Catherine Alston, World Cocoa Foundation

This fall, I had an opportunity to travel to Liberia to meet with the technical partners of the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program (WCF CLP) and visit the cocoa-growing areas in Bong County. During this trip, I spoke with many cocoa farmers and discussed the key challenges they face. Every independent cocoa farmer I met told me that the cocoa trees on their farm are very old and not producing the yields needed for farmers to improve their household income. To meet this challenge, the farmers informed me that they need improved cocoa seedlings to regenerate their aged farms.

That is why I am so pleased to see the progress of the Central Agricultural Research Institute (CARI) of Liberia. Through the coordination of the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture/Sustainable Tree Crops Program (IITA/STCP) and the Liberian government, CARI is developing hybrid material of improved cocoa seedlings from Ghana with Liberian stock that has learned how to thrive in the local environment.

Through grafting (pictured below) and hand pollination, the staff of CARI are growing the improved planting material that Liberian cocoa farmers so desperately need.

However, this process takes time and it will be another few years before CARI has seedlings that can be distributed to cocoa farmers throughout the country. Because of this, one of the primary goals of the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program in Liberia is to provide the much needed cocoa seedlings and work with the cocoa farmers in Bong, Lofa and Nimba counties.

WCF CLP will focus the farmer production training on practices that will help farmers rejuvenate their old cocoa farms. It is expected that by the end of the program (2013) 7,800 farmers will have planted over 1,700 hectares of improved cocoa seedlings distributed through the WCF Cocoa Livelihoods Program; effectively increasing the cocoa yield and incomes of the independent farmers I met.