• sustainable farming systems (soil conservation, crop diversification, etc.);
• sustainable food systems (replacing plastic film with biodegradable packaging);
• agroforestry systems in cacao cultivation;
• support for entrepreneurship; and
• grants for students.

Cacao Forest was one of the projects presented during the evening by Carole Seignovert (Valrhona) and Damien François (Ecotone), who explained the practical results achieved by the project since its launch six years ago. They also answered questions from the business leaders who attended.

Since it was set up in 2012, Terra Isara has provided grants and interest-free loans to 871 students (158 of which are international grants), funded 12 applied research programmes, and backed 19 food innovation projects.

We would like to thank Terra Isara for taking the opportunity of this anniversary event to explain the Cacao Forest project to the partner businesses that are co-funding the projects.

“Together, we are planting the seeds of sustainable farming and food production for everyone!”

Project coordinator Sebastián Cárdenas explained the limits required to ensure that volumes were sufficient to make harvesting breadfruit profitable in the context of Dominican cacao plantations. He also outlined the positive outcomes observed during the trial involving the planting and processing of hibiscus flowers, which has real potential to generate additional income for cocoa producers and can be more easily adapted to the local context.

The lessons learned from the pilot schemes carried out under the Cacao Forest project’s commercial production strategy for cacao-associated products have resulted in a series of recommendations and guidelines designed to boost the income of cocoa-producing families in the long term. As a result, they have helped improve the design of agroforestry systems in cacao cultivation.

The workshops were presented to 15 CONACADO producers and 12 COOPROAGRO producers.

From 2 to 11 June, the ‘Juntos Somos Verde’ festival took place at the Ágora Mall shopping centre in Santo Domingo.

The aim of this festival is to raise awareness among the general public about managing and consuming our natural resources sustainably and to encourage changes in behaviour that enable people to interact with the environment in more eco-friendly way.

As part of the festival, the Cacao Forest project was invited to give a talk on Friday 9 June on the advantages of agroforestry systems in cacao cultivation, which was delivered by the project’s general coordinator Sebastián Cárdenas.

In his presentation, Sebastián Cárdenas explained the main characteristics and advantages of agroforestry systems. Agroforestry is in fact the traditional method of cacao growing in the Dominican Republic.

Thanks to the organoleptic properties of the cacao grown here, the Dominican Republic is  today the leader on the international organically produced cocoa market. However, it is essential to improve the technical skills of producers and the way they manage cacao plantations to ensure a better quality of life for families who earn their living from cocoa and to reduce the impact of diseases such as Monilinia blight.

Through its participation in the ‘Juntos Somos Verde’ festival, the Cacao Forest project is stepping up its commitment to help innovate to ensure that cacao cultivation in the Dominican Republic is sustainable.

During the interview, he spoke on several key topics including:

– the benefits and advantages of cocoa,

– the origin of cacao cultivation,

– the fundamental role that cocoa plays in the Dominican economy,

– the context of the Dominican cocoa industry.

Sebastián also spoke at length about the initiatives being carried out by Cacao Forest to support the cocoa industry in the Dominican Republic with a view to both continuing to improve the quality of Dominican cocoa and increasing the incomes of cacao-growing families by introducing product processing and the sale of cacao-associated products in agroforestry models.

You can watch the full interview on YouTube here:

The presentation took place at the Comisión Nacional del Cacao. Cacao Forest project coordinator Sebastián Cárdenas explained the following aspect to the participants:

• the context of the Dominican cocoa industry, based on the data collected by the project;
• the different phases and components of the PRACAO initiative.

At the meeting it was stressed that rehabilitation of the country’s existing cacao plantations is urgently required given

– the advanced age of most plantations,

– the necessity to increase the economic returns of small cocoa producers,

– the need to improve the current genetic stock of the cacao plantations,

– the importance of mitigating the impact of any future Monilinia blight outbreak in the Dominican Republic.

Laurie Chovet, project officer for the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), which is funding half of the Cacao Forest project, again expressed AFD’s interest in supporting PRACAO in the form of a possible loan to the Dominican government. In this respect, the Ministry of Agriculture has a key role to play by including PRACAO in the Dominican government’s budget in 2024.

The Deputy Minister, Eulalio Ramírez, offered to organise a meeting with the Ministry of the Economy, Planning and Development (MEPyD) to address all of these issues and incorporate the programme into the government’s cocoa industry renewal initiative, which was recently launched by the Ministry of Agriculture through the Comisión Nacional del Cacao (CNC).

Victor Hidalgo, director of the CNC, said that PRACAO was very useful to the Dominican private cocoa export sector, stressing that this programme had been devised to incorporate 10 entities from both the public and private sectors.

The following organisations were represented at the meeting: the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO), the Dominican Republic Cocoa Foundation (DRCF), the Ministry of Agriculture’s Department of Cocoa, the cooperative and leading exporter CONACADO, the Dominican Organic Growers Foundation (FUNDOPO) and the Comisión Nacional del Cacao (CNC).

The PRACAO initiative is one element of part 2 of the Cacao Forest project in the Dominican Republic. At the request of the AFD, the project’s scientific coordinator CIRAD, supported by our partner EF, had drawn on the results generated by Cacao Forest since 2015 to set up and run a series of meetings and workshops with our 12 Dominican partners. The aim was to work with them to develop a project to rehabilitate the country’s 280,000 hectares of cacao plantations, cultivated by more than 45,000 families. Based on the four agroforestry models jointly developed and trialled in Cacao Forest’s Participatory Experimental Network (REP), the PRACAO Rehabilitation Plan is supported by our partners in the Dominican Republic. It will be submitted to the Dominican Congress for inclusion in the government budget in 2024 and for a loan application to the AFD. Implementation of the Plan is due to begin in 2024 in the form of four to five 3-year phases to cover a period of 12 to 15 years with a total budget of around US$ 70 million.

PRACAO comprises seven elements:

1. Development and greater provision of technical, scientific and academic human resources in agroforestry.
2. Creation and expansion of the basic infrastructure, in particular (i) the collection of local cultivars and varietal improvement plans; (ii) clonal gardens capable of supplying grafting material resistant to Monilinia blight; and (iii) public and private nurseries with sufficient capacity to produce the cacao trees and associated species required.
3. Rehabilitation of ageing and/or unproductive cacao plantations and assistance with creating new parcels. This element makes use of the four agroforestry models jointly developed and trialled by Cacao Forest between 2017 and 2023. It includes providing producers with technical support, introducing a nursery certification scheme and system for transporting the necessary resources with the help of producer cooperatives and the step-by-step implementation of the agroforestry rehabilitation and new parcel protocols.
4. Stepping up and encouraging reliable scientific approaches based in particular on (i) genetic improvement protocols; (ii) profitable agroforestry models; (iii) collections of plants of agricultural importance; and (iv) a culture of scientific rigour and publication of results.
5. Ensuring the economic resilience of producing families by providing support and facilities for processing and marketing associated products. This support is designed to promote the inclusion of young people and women at every level of the value chain and to improve the ability of farms to cope with extreme events.
6. Communication and relationship-building with the stakeholders to maintain a vibrant relationship between the PRACAO programme beneficiaries, to ensure their actions are transparent and focused, and to facilitate access to scientific and technical information.
7. Ensuring the long-term future of the Dominican cocoa industry by making sure it conforms with national and international standards and legislation to safeguard a responsibly produced cocoa supply.

The Minister of Agriculture welcomed the initiative, congratulating the coordinator Cacao Forest for the quality and clear structure of the proposal presentation and stating that it facilitated “the understanding of all parties”. He added that the cocoa industry required the committed involvement and cooperation of all stakeholders to ensure its long-term future. Señor Limbert Cruz López announced that the PRACAO initiative will be given Dominican government support and that he would make Ministry of Agriculture installations available to the programme, including for the event officially announcing the initiative, due to be held at the end of April 2023.

The meeting, which took place at the office of the Minister of Agriculture, was coordinated and introduced by the Executive Director of the Comisión Nacional del Cacao, Víctor Hidalgo, who represented the private sector, the joint originator of the initiative. The Director of the Ministry of Agriculture’s Public Investment Project Implementation Unit, Juan Moreno, and Pablo Rodríguez, Economic Advisor to the Ministry of Agriculture, were also present.