Cocoa Industry Seeks To Protect Supplies Via Foundation
By Enza Tedesco
New York, March 15 (OsterDowJones) - "Enjoy It While You Can" the New York Times warned chocoholics in 1998, in a story about the shrinkage of cocoa farming in some parts of the world caused by pests.
Since then the chocolate industry has fought back under the auspices of the World Cocoa Foundation launched in 2000, with projects aimed at training and assisting farmers to grow their crops in a sustainable and environmentally friendly way. That in turn can lead to higher yields and better quality.
"Everything that’s done is going to help the farmers to improve their yields and the trees around the area, increase their income and feed their families," said Susan Smith, senior vice president of public affairs with the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the voice of the U.S. chocolate industry, an active sponsor of the WCF.
While programs may indeed improve the lot of farmers, protect the environment and burnish the image of the chocolate industry, "the bottom line is they want to make sure their future production, their lifeline is sustained over the foreseeable future," said one cocoa trader in New York.
Thus far, there hasn’t been a noticeable impact on world cocoa production from the WCF’s efforts. According to data provided by the Foundation, world cocoa supply in 1999-2000 totaled 3.066 million metric tons. It declined to 2.806 million tons the following crop year and is estimated to reach 2.891 million during the 2001-02 season.
But it may be early days and the projects are by their nature piecemeal. There are currently three big WCF projects, in Indonesia, West Africa and Brazil. Just recently, the Foundation completed another project in the Dominican Republic that aimed at restoring and rehabilitating cocoa trees following the devastating effect of hurricane George in 1998.
"The result of that was that over one year-and-a-half period we distributed 1.2 million seedlings to 1,000 farmers," said Bill Guyton, the WCF’s executive director and vice president of cocoa research with the American Cocoa Research Institute. He added that the country’s production currently stands around 40,000 to 45,000 metric tons, after dipping to half of that in the wake of the hurricane.
W AFRICA NETWORK KEY FOR CHILD LABOR SURVEYS
In West Africa, which accounts for nearly 70% of world cocoa production, the WCF’s Sustainable Tree Crops Program aims to help smaller farmers and to stimulate global investment in crop production, marketing and processing of cocoa, cashews and coffee. It was established in 1999 with the U.S. Agency for International Development.
That program also gave the WCF the resources on the ground to tackle the issue of child labor on cocoa farms. Last summer, reports that children were sold or tricked into slavery to harvest cocoa - chocolate’s main ingredient - in West Africa tainted the chocolate industry’s image.
Late last year, the CMA signed a six-step protocol, which sets a series of deadlines over the next four years to lay the groundwork for monitoring and remedying abusive forms of child labor in cocoa-producing countries in West Africa: Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Cameroon and Nigeria.
The first step is an investigative survey of 3,000 cocoa farms. Although it’s unclear when the results will be released, the latest information points to late June or July, Smith of the CMA said.
"In those countries we have national networks that have been established, so we have a support system already in place that has really been beneficial in the development of the surveys," Guyton said. "But of course the survey goes well beyond what we’ve been doing there."
A cocoa researcher based in West Africa expressed some cynicism, contending that chocolate companies, mainly M&M/Mars, started the STCP project because of their concerns about cocoa supply. They were worried about the political stability in Ivory Coast and about the country’s dominant position in cocoa supply, he said.
"They are not frank," he said, adding that they were trying to mask their interests in the form of a supposedly altruistic project.
INDONESIAN "SUCCESS PROJECT" AIMS AT PEST CONTROL
In Indonesia, the world’s third largest producer, the Foundation’s "SUCCESS project" is funded by the WCF in partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a local non-government organization. "The project’s goal is to increase income of small growers in Sulawesi, by reducing the crop loss caused by the pod borer," Guyton explained. "It targets 20,000 farmers over a two-year period, and to date we’ve reached 8,500 farmers."
The cocoa pod borer, a moth whose larvae infest the cocoa fruit, continues to harm crops in Sulawesi, Indonesia’s main cocoa-producing region, slashing the country’s production in 2002 by 10% to 15% from the previous year’s 370,000 metric tons, according to the Indonesian Cocoa Association, or Askindo.
The package "consists of frequent and complete harvesting, pruning and sanitation (processes), but all in the right timing, knowing the cocoa pod borer lifecycle and knowing when to do different kind of intervention," Guyton said. He added that not only cocoa losses from pod borer are down from 39% to 15%, but also quality has improved. By following these practices farmers also decreased the pressure from black pod fungal disease as well as rodent problems.
BRAZIL’S PROJECT FOCUSES ON CONSERVATION
In Brazil, the world’s fifth largest cocoa producer, the Foundation’s project, in partnership with Conservation International, focuses on the development of biological corridors between natural patches of the Atlantic rain forest. Those corridors or "natural bridges" of forest can be used to link one forest reserve to another. Cocoa, planted between reserves and pockets of natural forest, provides a path for animals to move between patches of natural forests, Guyton explained.
"The aim here is not so much to increase production as it is looking at cocoa in the environment as an agro-ecology project," Guyton noted. But the project is also aimed at curbing "witches’ broom," a deadly white fungus, which has transformed Brazil into a net cocoa importer from being the world’s second largest exporter over the past decade. The project promotes biodiversity and hence natural predators such as other fungi or insects, which can combat cocoa diseases and pests.