Ghana's climate-smart cocoa

Cocoa drying in the Juabeso district, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen

I recently went to Ghana to look at how cocoa farmers were adapting to and fighting the impacts of climate change.

I loved that assignment because Ghana is one of my favourite countries. I am also crazy about chocolate and worry about not being able to get my daily fix. I had read a report by the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), which predicted that increasing temperatures will lead to massive declines in cocoa production by 2030 in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire, which produce more than half of the world’s cocoa. With China and India developing an appetite for chocolate, the demand for cocoa might then outweigh the supply.

I have looked at commoditie across Africa and Asia in the past and reported on efforts to improve production while giving good wages and living conditions to  farmers and protect the environment. But the project I visited in Western Ghana was different because it focused not only on the farms, but on the whole landscape, the fallow lands and the forests.

Once, lush forests covered most of the country - the green of the Ghanaian flag represents them - but over the past decades, they have been cut to make space for more cocoa. Ghana is now the country with the fastest deforestation rate in the world.

The loss of forests compromises the region’s biodiversity, but also exacerbates the impact of climate change.  The country’s temperatures are slowly rising - and cocoa trees are now under threat.  

In the Juabeso/Bia district, international environmental organization Rainforest Alliance (RA) and Olam International Ltd have teamed up to help farmers produce what they believe is the first “climate-smart" cocoa in the world.  The $1 million three-year pilot project provides farmers in 36 communities with a combination of proven tools and innovative practices for land management and conservation, so that they can help reduce deforestation and climate change and at the same time earn a sustainable livelihood.

Cocoa farmers at a RA training session in Eteso, Ghana/Credit: Veronique Mistiaen

“In order to insure there is a future for cocoa production, you need an environment that supports cocoa, otherwise cocoa is dead,” says Atsu Titiati, RA project director in Ghana.
 

Read my piece for New Agriculturist here and Economist’s Baobab blog here.

Vietnam coffee - A better future is percolating for Vietnam's coffee

Ripe coffee cherries ready for picking on a Rainforest Alliance certified farm in Vietnam/Veronique Mistiaen

I recently went to the central highlands region of Vietnam to look at the terrible environmental cost the country is paying for its spectacular coffee growth over the past two decades. Now the country is trying to undo the damages and put itself on a more sustainable path.

Here is my story, published in the Guardian yesterday.

  

 A better future is percolating for Vietnam's coffee

 The spectacular growth of coffee in Vietnam came at a terrible environmental cost. Now conservation groups are working with food multinationals to ensure quality and sustainable production

A coffee picker from the ethnic minority Edê. Photograph: Veronique Mistiaen

The velvety coffee slowly dripping from the filter into my glass is bitter and dark. But once mixed with the sweet, silky condensed milk at the bottom, it turns into a rich chocolaty brew. It is a fitting metaphor for the story of coffee in Vietnam.

French colonists introduced coffee here in 1857. The central highlands region – known as Buon Ma Thuot – proved a perfect area for growing robusta beans. But a century later, the Vietnam war devastated the country and coffee production was severely disrupted.

After the long war, the government, supported by development agencies, launched a vast coffee-growing programme in the region to help put the country on the road to recovery. Its success has been astonishing.

In just two decades, Vietnam went from the scorched earth of Agent Orange to become the second coffee exporter in the world after Brazil, and the number one for robusta – one of the two main coffee species, often used in instant coffee. (Arabica, the other main variety, is grown at a higher altitude and comprises about 75% of world production).

This spectacular comeback has been a huge boon to the economy – coffee is Vietnam's key export, generating an income of more than $1.5bn. In total, the coffee sector represents 3% of national GDP, providing a livelihood for around 2.6 million people – 600,000 of them farmers and many from minority ethnic groups. Only 5% to 7% of the total production is used for domestic consumption; the rest is exported, mostly to the US and Europe.

But the coffee miracle has come at a terrible cost. In the 1990s, when coffee price was high, entire forests were razed to make space for more coffee, grown as a monoculture with heavy use of agrochemicals and over-irrigation. While the acreage under coffee expanded rapidly, the development of training and processing infrastructure could not keep up.

The proliferation of poorly managed coffee farms (coffee in Vietnam is mostly grown on small family-run farms of two to five acres), where beans were cultivated with little regard for the environment, resulted in a glut of low quality beans that drove export prices down, contributing to the global collapse of coffee prices in the 2000s. It has also caused widespread pollution, soil and water degradation, habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity in one of the most biologically diverse countries in south-east Asia.

Coffee pickers with their harvest after a long day of work/Veronique Mistiaen

 Aside from the catastrophic impact on the environment and the quality of its beans, coffee in Vietnam is now facing new challenges, such as adaptation to climate change, a younger generation not wanting to be farmers and a global market changing from oversupply with record low prices to supply shortage with high prices (and as China and India are developing a taste for coffee, the demand is likely to skyrocket).

These issues are so critical that, for the first time, the government, farmers, traders and global food giants see the need to develop sustainable practices. They are working with social and conservation groups such as the Rainforest Alliance, the 4C Association and the Fairtrade Foundation to find ways to make coffee farming more productive, while reducing the cost on the environment.

Behind Magnum Ghana ice cream

Cocoa pods harvest/Fjona Hill

 

Apparently last week was National Chocolate Week, so I am a bit late with this post, but hey!

I went to Ghana a few weeks ago to look at Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa farms where Magnum sources the cocoa beans for its new Magnum Ghana ice cream. 

We were an all-woman team: a filmmaker, a photographer, a representative from Magnum and myself. Our brief was to make a film, write an article and shoot pictures describing the cocoa cycle from “beans to bite” and looking at the impact of the certification process on the farmers and their families, the environment and the quality of the cocoa beans.  A fascinating assignment for a chocolate-lover like me!   

The knowledgeable Rainforest Alliance’s representative Christian Mensah facilitated our three-day stay at Gold Coast and Agave camps, two of several farming communities in the Assin Fosu district of Ghana’s central region, producing cocoa beans for Magnum ice cream.  

Road leading to Gold Coast camp in Assin Fosu/Fjona Hill

 

 

The farming villages are nested in dense, lush vegetation, off a red-dirt road, some 4 hours north-west of Accra, the capital.

When we arrived, we were greeted with drums and dancing women as it is often custom in Africa. The chiefs and elders from all the neighbouring farming communities made us the honour of welcoming us into their communities.  The head chief usually speaks publicly only through an intermediary - his linguist in traditional robes and golden staff - but he made an exception as we were foreigners.  He said the Rainforest Alliance certification process has transformed the lives of villagers here.  In fact, everyone we spoke with – men, women and children - said that.  I wondered whether people had been briefed to be so positive. Apparently no – their enthusiasm was genuine.

The chiefs of neighbouring villages came to greet us/Fjona Hill

 

 

Farming communities in the region have grown cocoa beans for generations. Ghana is the second largest cocoa producer in the world after Ivory Coast and cocoa is Ghana’s largest cash crop.  In 2011, Unilever’s Magnum ice cream joined forces with global conservation NGO Rainforest Alliance to bring sustainable agriculture practices to cocoa farmers in the region, promote nature conservation and increase the quality of life of farming communities. 

 

After just one year, 450 farmers in the Assin Fosu region have already achieved Rainforest Alliance (RA) Certification - a rigorous process that covers social, economic and environmental factors, including soil management and biodiversity protection.  It also means better conditions and higher income for workers.  Magnum’s goal is to source the entirety of its global cocoa supply from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms by 2015.

 

One of the most important things farmers said they have learned through the programme is how to identify and deal with pests and diseases, which attack cocoa pods and trees. If untreated, these fungus and bugs can spread to the whole tree and even contaminate the entire cocoa farm.  In the past, they all have lost harvests and trees to these pests. The training also covers preservation of wildlife and the eco-system around their farms, health and safety issues and the importance of sending their children to school, among other topics.

Bi-monthly training session during which farmers learn best farming practices/Fjona Hill

In addition, the programme has enhanced the status of women, says Fatima Ali, the chief of a neighbouring village.  “As a woman, I feel empowered by this programme.   I’ve applied the skills I’ve learned through the training and my farm’s yield has increased significantly. I am now training other farmers in the community. Traditionally, farming decisions were taken by men, but now I am training them.”

Farmer Rabiatu Abubakar says her family has “benefited enormously” from the programme.  “Our production has increased and we have now more money. This has strengthened my relationship with my husband. We are now able to send our children to school and feed them well. We are all happier.”  

Find out more about the cocoa process and RA certification programme in Assin Fosu by reading my guest post on RA’s Frog Blog here.

Save the ancient cork forests- put a cork in it

I am just back from a reporting trip looking at the beautiful Montados, the cork forests in Portugal, which produce more than 50% of all the cork consumed worldwide. These forests, which spread over 2.7 million hectares along the Mediterranean Basin in Portugal, Spain, North Africa, France and Italy, are listed amongst the world’s major biodiversity hotspots and support an economy and culture that have grown up around cork farming over thousands of years.

The recent trend of replacing cork wine stoppers with plastic and screw caps, however, is threatening these forests and the animal and people who depend on them to survive.  Synthetic tops now account for close to 30 per cent of the some 17 billion stoppers used every year. If this trend continues, up to three quarters of the Mediterranean's cork forests could be lost within 10 years, estimates the World Wildlife Fund. 

It is harvest time in the Montado forest of Coruche in the Alentejo. Groups of men from nearby villages are skilfully stripping the thick bark off the cork oak trees with a special axe, performing the same precise, measured gestures as their fathers and grandfathers have done before them.  Women gather the bark strips into large piles, which men load onto tractors. They paint the year of the harvest on the light chocolate tree trunks, so they won’t be touched again for another nine years. The cork oak (Quercus Suber L.) lives up to 250 years and can on average be stripped 16 times during its lifetime, producing enough cork in each harvest to cover 4,000 wine bottles.

The cork forest I visited is a mosaic of cork and other oaks species, pine trees (producing pine nuts), wild olive trees, many different brackens and grassland.  Each one thousand square meter of forest contains about 135 species of plants, many with aromatic, culinary, or medicinal properties. 



The longevity of the cork forests and the diversity of the flora they harbor provide a myriad of niches for many different animals, says Nuno Oliveira, an independent conservation biologist, who guided our visit.  The forests’ open areas, shrubs and tree crowns offer escape, cover, nidification and foraging grounds to 24 species of reptiles and amphibians, 37 mammal species and 100 birds species, some of which are endangered, like the Imperial Eagle and Iberian Lynx.  The forests also host large colonies of insects of all kinds, which provide abundant food for birds nesting in the area and stopping here during migration.

These ancient forests absorb 10 million tones of CO2 every year and act as the last barrier against advancing desertification in North Africa.

Then there are the people: The Mediterranean cork forests not only support some 100,000 cork workers  (harvesting, general forestry and industrial processing), but also sustain a traditional way of life. There, farmers have practiced a low-intensity mix of agriculture and forestry for millennia - on even a small patch of cork land, they can raise a herd of goats, a few cows, goats and some pigs, which forage for acorns and graze beneath the trees. Villagers gather mushrooms, use rockrose bushes for firewood and tap local beehives for honey.

 “The Montado is not about top species like lions or elephants, but it is its communities of plants and animals – so rich, so diverse and living in perfect harmony – that make it so unique,” says Rainforest Alliance local representative Rui Simoes. In fact, he adds, the cork forests are one of the best examples of balanced conservation and development anywhere in the world. 

To help protect their endangered cork forests, cork producers in Portugal, Spain and Morocco are working with Rainforest Alliance through its Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which shows they comply with the highest social and environmental standards of the market.  Cork manufacturers in Portugal have also significantly improved the quality of their corks and launched publicity campaigns to urge consumers and retailers to value the cork in their wine bottles.