Agriculture and Environment: Cocoa

Better Management Practices: Diversify sources of income

Researchers have shown that interplanting low-input cocoa plantings with fruit trees can buffer the impacts of low cocoa prices.

The break-even cocoa price for such integrated producers is just over 50% of the price needed to break even in cocoa production without fruit trees (Rice and Greenberg 2000).

Similarly, shade trees selectively cut to manage shade can be sold for timber, fuel, or charcoal. The sale of shade trees in coffee plantations has shown that they can compensate for lost yields of 17% when prices are high, 33% when they are intermediate, and 100% when they are low (Rice and Greenberg 2000).

Thus, the shade trees offer sources of income at precisely the times when producers need them most. There is no reason to assume similar earnings/loss effects would not apply equally to cocoa.

Managing carbon is another potential income source for cocoa farmers if Kyoto like mechanisms are ever ratified. Forty-year-old cocoa agroforestry systems in Cameroon fix atmospheric carbon at levels of around 154 metric tons per hectare. Systems that are 15-25 years old sequester 111 and 132 metric tons of carbon respectively.

While lower than sequestration rates for primary forests (307 MT/ha), they are far greater than rates for annual crops, even those with associated fallows (Rice and Greenberg 2000). Depending on the price assigned to carbon, sequestration could supply significant income for producers and also an incentive for them to retain shade trees in their areas of production and to reduce chemical inputs. Provided the carbon can continue to be stored, shorter-term crop rotations tend to sequester more carbon per hectare per year.