Going organic

Rafal Taciak, commercial director for cocoa and Christina Franken, marketing communication, Tradin Organic, discuss the challenges of meeting a growing demand for organic cocoa.

In its 2013 report, the Soil Association reported that the global organic market was worth €45.8bn in 2012, of which just below 50 per cent was made up of European sales. According to Euromonitor, Western Europe is the largest market for organic chocolate and was worth €558m in 2012.
Cocoa grows within a narrow belt 20 degrees north and south of the equator in the Americas, Africa and Asia. Overall, 90 per cent of global demand for cocoa is met by small farms of about five to eight hectares. However, global cocoa consumption is growing at about two to three per cent per year, with the organic cocoa market expected to grow over-proportionally. Improving the situation for those involved in growing cocoa appears to be an essential area on which to focus if we are to ensure there is a sustainable and healthy future for chocolate production. So, what exactly are the challenges of meeting the demand for cocoa for the growing organic chocolate market?

Supply and demand

From the 1950s onwards, local authorities in cocoa regions encouraged farmers to grow cocoa, often providing free or subsidised seedlings. Only a decade later, the volume of cocoa produced by smallholder farms had already exceeded that of cocoa plantations.
Cocoa was promoted as a diversification crop through specific projects to increase production and improve farming knowledge, often through non-governmental organisations, which next to sustainable agricultural practices also introduced social improvements.
In Peru, organic cocoa programmes were introduced during the late 1990s, encouraging cocoa farmers to make the switch to cultivating legal crops. These programmes powered radical changes not only in the fight against the illegal drug trade, but also through improving the livelihoods and social circumstances of farmers and their families. Since then, a main area of support for cocoa farmers in all the countries within the cocoa belt has been improvements in both pre- and post-harvesting practices.
Farming practices

The Dominican Republic is today known as a producer of fine-flavour cocoa. However, in the early 1980s the reputation of Dominican cocoa was poor due to weak farming practices. Tradin Organic set up its first organic cocoa project in the Dominican Republic in close collaboration with Conacado (The Competitiveness of Small Organic Cocoa Producers of the National Confederation of Dominican Cocoa Producers).
Gerard Versteegh, CEO of Tradin Organic explains: “Origins such as Peru or Dominican Republic have seen their rise in the cocoa world through the introduction of organic and speciality cocoa programmes based on the growing global demand for these niche types of cocoa.”

Supply chain

Companies such as Tradin Organic set up projects in the origins, assist co-operatives with their expertise and network of agronomists to get the sought-after certifications, monitor developments and generate knowledge transfer between quality teams and farmers. Tradin Organic recently invested into a new cocoa processing facility in the Netherlands, specialising in processing primarily certified cocoa beans. The reason for this high-tech investment is clear: accommodating organic bean processing for conventional factories creates a lot of challenges in production planning and, more generally, in meeting demand in terms of production efficiency.
For conventional processors it is not efficient to flush the production lines with organic beans every time a tolling contract requires a load of organic derivatives. This requires a state-of-the-art processing production line that runs with only organic and certified cocoa beans to offer the shortest possible lead times. A reasonably sized factory in combination with highly efficient equipment provides flexibility to accommodate anything between short production runs and tolling agreements for larger quantities of certified cocoa products.
Only through such a vertically integrated supply chain – from the farm to the market – can a supplier of organic confectionery products fully guarantee the organic integrity of its cocoa products.

Certification

To get their farms certified, farmers face high costs and huge efforts in order to comply with rules and regulations. Farmers group together in co-operatives to handle these additional burdens to improve their capacity to compete in the global cocoa market.
However, in the current market for semi-processed cocoa products, the organic label seems to be under-represented in comparison to more well-known certification labels such as Fairtrade, UTZ and Rainforest Alliance. In addition, these alternative labels place less demands on farmers than organic certification.
The result is that only 1-1.5 per cent of the global cocoa supply is grown following organic agricultural practices. Insufficient incentives for growing organic cocoa could be one of the reasons – cocoa beans with other certifications promise a fixed premium, while the premium for organic beans is not defined. In addition to these financial implications one has to take into account up to 40-50 per cent lower yields for organically grown cocoa trees. For this reason, convincing farmers to produce cocoa the sustainable organic way could prove very challenging.

One solution for farmers that grow organic offers double or even multiple certification. This means that farmers grow certified organic cocoa but add at least one other certification label to win the guaranteed premium. At the same time, this solution could render organic certification and agriculture redundant for cocoa farmers.

Training

Offering training to improve cocoa yields through better farming practices is another option for organic cocoa processors and organic chocolate producers to help meet the growing demand for organic cocoa.
The necessary crop management includes activities such as appropriate pruning, daily garden maintenance and side-grafting for unproductive plants. This way, organic fertilisers can be created economically from by-products of mulching and pruning activities originating on the same farm.
To produce cocoa beans of good quality and flavour for the chocolate industry, good knowledge of post-harvesting practices such as fermenting and drying are vital. Cocoa fermentation involves microbial activity in the cocoa pulp and changes the colour and internal cell structure of the bean. Only fermentation processes through the involved temperature and acidity generate what is after the roasting of the bean known as the typical cocoa flavour. This is why fermentation processes are essential to cocoa processing for the chocolate industry and cannot be neglected without affecting the quality of the chocolate that is produced.

Conclusion

The region around Zaandam in Holland, situated only a few kilometres north of Amsterdam’s port, is often thought of as a global centre for cocoa processing. Van Houten invented the most common form of processing cocoa – treating cocoa with an alkalising agent to modify its colour and flavour profile – which is also known as Dutching.

Generally speaking, during cocoa roasting, a number of synthetic modifications take place, which determine the flavour of the final cocoa products. If the bean is roasted before winnowing, the finest flavours are retained within the shell. Typically the whole-bean roasting process is known as an artisan method of roasting the precious cocoa beans, the reasons for this simply being economic; roasting the whole beans takes longer than roasting winnowed beans, which is why the industry usually prefers the latter.
In terms of the organic industry, even the cocoa shells are in demand, for example among dairy farmers as organic feed supplement.
In the light of the steady upward trend in the demand for organic chocolate and confectionery, it remains to be seen to what extent the organic farming practices in the origins can be improved effectively and economically to avoid a further increase in price and an even greater gap opening up between organic and conventionally grown products.

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