One of Barry Callebaut’s primary goals in Forever #chocolate is to lift more than 500,000 farmers out of poverty. To get there, we can improve farm productivity and increase the yield of high-quality cocoa. Doing this will enable farmers to sell their cocoa at higher prices and gain access to a better quality of life. But how can farmers grow more high-quality cocoa on the same amount of land? With better trees. Barry Callebaut aims to deliver 500,000 seedlings from its cocoa nurseries to farmers in #indonesia in 2017 and is in the midst of trialing a range of interventions to produce the best trees.
Barry Callebaut’s Richard Fahey, Vice President for Cocoa in Asia, and Indonesia-based Sustainability Manager Ani Setiyoningrum, answer questions about our innovative seedling program in #indonesia.
Why do cocoa farmers need new trees?Richard Fahey: Indonesia has been struggling to increase cocoa production because of ageing cocoa trees. Most of them were planted in the 1980s, are vulnerable to diseases and are well past their peak production years. Cocoa trees are strong, and will produce pods for a long time. However, the high-productive years of a cocoa tree are finite, and usually after 25 years, the trees are less productive. #indonesia desperately needs new trees in order to get back to a productivity level of around 1 mt of beans per hectare.
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