Don’t forget the farmers
The future of cocoa supply is always at the forefront of our minds. With demand increasing rapidly, industry is worried about how supply will keep up.
With this in mind, my publisher, Neil McRitchie attended the Asia Choco Congress in Jakarta, Indonesia to see how we can increase production sustainably.
His thoughts from the conference are below:
“In the (approximate) words of Bob Dylan at Live Aid back in 1985, ‘Don’t forget the farmers’. I have just returned from Jakarta, where I attended the Asia Choco Congress and spent two days discussing cocoa.
“It was generally agreed that there was a one million ton shortfall of cocoa, as farmers are more interested in more profitable crops such as palm oil.
“We talked about how the farmers could find out more about the end products of cocoa production. Has the average cocoa farmer ever seen the finished products or even eaten chocolate? Probably not, was the depressing answer. Plenty of productivity ideas were discussed at the conference – such as how the farmer could generate more from his hectares, and how investment opportunities can result in the farmer losing money only for two years, then start seeing profit in year three.
“This seemed to me to be the discussions of chattering classes, completely missing the point. The smallholders in Asia or Africa don’t care about cocoa, they only care about feeding their families. And talking to a farmer living on the bread line about a long term investment is a losing battle, perhaps hence the one million ton shortfall. As I see it, the answer is to pay more for the cocoa and thus ensure that the farmers will continue farming. Another answer perhaps is for the cocoa manufactures to buy the farms and pay the farmers to work the land. This was mentioned at the conference but was dismissed because “we are chocolate manufacturers, not farmers” .
“What was also interesting was that out of the 100 or so delegates at the conference, how many farmers were there? None.”
