Part II
It’s been an unusual task for a chocolate company to help develop a new formulation fertilizer and engage with fertilizer and financial institutes for the production, import and credit mechanisms for the sale of high quality fertilizer. And we still have a long way to go before we will habitually replenish the nutrients we export as cocoa beans from cocoa plantations. But
Part 1
The need for fertilizers
For many years, we have known that soil fertility and fertilizer are necessary to cultivate cocoa farms for high yield and long term farm viability and sustainability. And when in 2010, we developed the “package of interventions” for farmers that will turn cocoa farms from places that are low income with no future to thriving and sustainable farming
After weeks of travel, I only started checking my agenda a few days prior to a scheduled group meeting with Princess Máxima, the wife of Crown Prince Willem Alexander of the Netherlands, at a congress organized by the Sustainable Trade Initiative. I was honored to have the opportunity to meet her but I assumed that it would be no more than a hand shake
Cocoa producing regions throughout Côte d’Ivoire are battling declining yields and increased tree mortality, but affordable fertilizer production and distribution is one of the most effective tools to help reverse this trend. And we’re excited to announce that the first shipment of a new fertilizer blend recently arrived in the famous cocoa belt of Soubre, a region where local farmers have been struggling to
IDH Sustainable Trade Initiative is a trade body supported by the Dutch Government, designed to help promote sustainable trade and strengthen supply of different commodities in The Netherlands.
As the manager of the cocoa program at IDH I’m proud of our ambitious initiative to transform the cocoa sector though mainstreaming sustainability. Our program aimed primarily on professionalizing farmers, so that they can increase productivity
