The contest was launched in December 2012 and was supported by the local department of education in those three counties. Up to 20 proposals were received for the first round selection, covering the topics of farmer training, plant breeding, waste management, and agricultural tools. Those proposals were assessed against their creativity, business planning and sustainability. Six teams were selected and invited to present at the final round in April 2013.

Nurlaili, Rilwan and Dwi Ramadani from SMK Bone-bone won the first prize, with their proposal of affordable mini paper making machine, which helps farmers to create side income by making paper products from wasted cocoa pods. Compared to traditional cocoa paper machines, the new one proposed by the winning team is more affordable, improves efficiency, helps to provide extra income through the making of cocoa paper and is easier to use to bread the cocoa pods. The second and third prize went to teams from SMK Tomoni, East Luwu

Nurlaili, Rilwan and Dwi Ramadani from SMK Bone-bone won the first prize, with their proposal of affordable mini  pod breaker machine, which helps farmers to create side income by selling service of breaking cocoa pods. Compared to traditional pod breaker machines, the new one proposed by the winning team is more affordable, improves efficiency, easier to use to break the cocoa pods  and helps to provide extra income through selling services.

The 3 winning teams at the final competition

As part of Mars’ Sustainable Cocoa Initiative, cocoa farmers were also invited to attend the final selection as audience members. They found that some ideas were very practical and could be adapted to their farming.

During her keynote speech at the final, Sari Nurlan, Corporate Affairs Manager at Mars Symbioscience Indonesia said, “Mars has been promoting cocoa as a curricular to vocational school students since 2007, and the contest today encourages young students to practice what they learned from school, and bring in new solutions to current farming practice. In this way, young people find their passion in cocoa industry, and create business opportunities for themselves, as well as for a wider community.”

“The contest went very well. Mars did a good job in motivating vocational students to explore business opportunities. And it really helped sharpen the students’ business skills,” said Syafei Megaku, who is the Chief of Vocational Agriculture from North Luwu.

Bamba describes how much it would mean to her family if they could raise their own livestock. They’d have enough meat to pay for their children to go to school and to feed everyone on the farm, and some women would be able to leave behind the backbreaking work in the field to care for the livestock instead. We were moved by Bamba’s determination to improve the lives of her fellow farmers and to provide for the farm’s children.

You can also watch the video on the blog’s video page or at our YouTube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgmK82WY1HY&list=PL4aR8gG6tmWL1d6WJUhEau6Ed5_lLlQ2o&index=2

We are pleased to join other corporate leaders in signing a statement of support for the UN Women Empowerment Principles.  We are especially encouraged that among the principles, there is a specific focus on designing supply chains that empower women and promoting equality through community initiatives, since Mars Chocolate strongly believes such efforts will have a long-term, positive effect on the well-being of women in cocoa communities around the world.

The plan of action for empowering women that we agreed to with Oxfam America builds on a foundation of leadership the company has built to empower women across the supply chain.  Addressing the socio-economic challenges that women and families in cocoa communities face requires a comprehensive and holistic approach, and our Sustainable Cocoa Initiative is one model that we believe will help improve the quality of life for farmers and their families.  Our effort is guided by a principle of putting farmers first, and our aim is to make them more productive through better research, a comprehensive training program, and a strong certification protocol.

Women invest significantly greater proportions of their disposable income in family and community well-being, which is why we believe that empowering women will have an important impact. Women’s economic empowerment is a tool for gender equity in its own right, and also provides a powerful multiplier effect for the broader well-being of children, families and communities. Within our Vision for Change program in Côte d’Ivoire, Mars Chocolate is working with women leaders in their communities in the Soubré region of that country to help develop community engagement plans and listening to them outline the concerns they have for the women they represent.  Recently, Mars Chocolate funded six economic development projects within Vision for Change to train women in developing local enterprises, such as animal rearing and crop production, which will help families meet their nutritional needs as well as increase the income of women who sell surplus production in local markets.

It’s not enough to simply produce more cocoa – it has to be of a high enough quality so that manufacturers can use it to make good tasting chocolate. By 2020, Vision For Change aims to reach 150,000 cocoa producers in Soubré – working with farmers to utilize better planting material, increase the supply and use of fertilizer, and help to reduce losses due to pests and diseases. Vision for Change is also working on the crucial post harvest practices necessary to produce good quality cocoa, especially fermentation and drying.

We are part of the Mars Chocolate team in Slough, and we recently spent some time with the ICRAF team working on Vision for Change.  The quality improvement work in Vision For Change has begun in earnest, and we worked with the team – training them on sensory practices, the importance of flavour quality and reviewing the implementation of good post harvest practices on cocoa farms.

To engage the Vision For Change team and help them understand the protocol to assess flavour quality, I took them through sensory techniques, and explained how cocoa flavour quality will be assessed in the Vision For Change project. This part of the project aims at monitoring cocoa bean flavour quality from farms throughout the season, comparing project and non-project cocoa.

The Vision for Change team will use this information to encourage farmers to ferment and dry cocoa in the best way, making sure that cocoa quality is as good as it can be.

It’s often a challenge to communicate to farmers the need for good quality cocoa, particularly since the crop is not consumed locally in most cases.  With the help of our team, we are trying to make the Vision For Change project different and a success. High productivity and good quality will go hand in hand in our vision for not just more cocoa but better cocoa!

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 the collaboration on the “Fertilizer Initiative,” led by the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), together with the fertilizer and cocoa industry has proven to be a powerful mechanism to get us on the way.

The Fertilizer Initiative succeeded to produce 10,000 metric tons (mt) of new formulation fertilizer, of which 8,000 mt is now available from warehouses in Cote d’Ivoire. This may not look significant against the future need of 1 Billion mt of fertilizer but we now have a new, better and cheaper formulation fertilizer, and the partners we need to produce, export, import and distribute it, while we’re working on credit mechanisms with financial institutes.

It is time to sum up the accomplishments of IDH and partners, including Mars Chocolate, and cautiously celebrate our success so far:

• Development of new formulation fertilizer – not only cheaper, but addressing soil acidification
• OCP, a Moroccan fertilizer company, that has taken the challenge to produce such fertilizer and export it to Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria
• The cocoa industry, that has shouldered development cost for the first batch of new formulation fertilizer
• Fertilizer companies that now realize the opportunity to produce 1 Billion mt of fertilizer for the cocoa industry alone
• The Government of Cote d’Ivoire that has mentioned its appreciation for the Fertilizer Initiative, and has announced it will put a subsidy in place to make fertilizer even more affordable
• And financial institutes that take a new interest in credit mechanisms for small holder cocoa farmers.

We’ve only supplied 1% of the fertilizer we need to the cocoa farmers. But perhaps this was the most difficult 1% and we can now focus on scaling this effort up!

The farmers need fertilizer, the industry needs farmers to use fertilizer and produce cocoa beans, the governments of cocoa producing countries need a thriving agricultural sector, the fertilizer industry needs a market for a variety of fertilizers, and the financing industry needs to find to extend credit to small holder farmers – let’s go for it!

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 systems, fertilizer was one of the three pillars of that package – along with plant material and grafting and Good Agricultural Practices. We knew that none of these pillars were easy to develop and scale up, but we hadn’t really considered the ‘how’ yet.

Taking up the challenge

It was only when we were tasked by our Sustainable Cocoa Initiative leadership to ensure nothing less than the availability and affordability of high quality fertilizers for the majority of farmers that we started realizing how big this challenge was.  Not only did we need a fertilizer that would replenish all the nutrients that had been exported from cocoa farms in the form of dry cocoa beans, we also had to address the issue of mitigating deteriorating soil acidification, which is common in many farming systems. And we would have to develop a better, but also cheaper, fertilizer that cocoa farmers could afford. The fertilizer industry didn’t really focus on the cocoa sector as it was seen as ‘low opportunity’, and credit systems for small holder farmers to purchase fertilizer simply didn’t exist. How do we start on this?

Creating the buzz

One of the first things we did was to quantify the challenge – how much fertilizer do we need to bring back to African soils, based on nutrient exports in cocoa beans? Depending on the formulation of fertilizer, the volumes were staggering as for every 1000 kg of cocoa beans exported, we had to bring back 143 kg of nutrients, or 300 kg of fertilizer, at a cost of $750US per metric ton. Aiming to meet the needs of the future, by 2020 we would have to bring 1.2 Billion mt of fertilizer to African cocoa farms, with a cost of nearly $1 Billion US.

But with big challenges come big solutions. When we approached OCP, a Moroccan fertilizer company with a mandate to develop agriculture in Africa, they saw the size of the opportunity ($1 Billion US) and they accepted the challenge to produce a ‘new formulation fertilizer’ with natural, reactive rock phosphate with high calcium, which allowed for a much less expensive fertilizer that could address soil acidification. Once the cocoa industry and various organizations realized how many nutrients were exported in the form of cocoa beans, there was strong support to collaborate and put our shoulders jointly under this enormous challenge.  And when the financial institutes saw that the fertilizer and cocoa industry were serious about this challenge and were willing to collaborate to produce, import and bring fertilizers close to farm gate, they recognized the need for credit support, as well as the $1 Billion financing opportunity.   Financial institutions are now re-evaluating their risk assessments and are exploring how they can deliver credit systems for small holder cocoa farmers. The Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH) took the challenge to coordinate all these efforts, and set up the “Fertilizer Initiative,” where the fertilizer and cocoa industries, as well as some institutes and the Governments of Cote d’Ivoire and Nigeria are collaborating to produce, import, transport and sell fertilizer to farmers at affordable prices, and the first 10,000 mt new formulation fertilizer was produced and imported in March 2013.

Whilst we’ve got a long way to go to reach the 1 Billion mt of fertilizer we need by 2020, we should also recognize that we’ve come a long way already.

3 years ago, Astuty’s farm was infested with CPB (Cocoa Pod Borer), which is a mosquito-sized moth, rotted the cocoa pods from inside out. CPB almost ruined her entire farm, leaving a yield of less than 50Kg. Facing the challenge of feeding her 6 children and sending them to school, the old lady was totally depressed.

She was thinking of cutting down all her trees and planting some other crops, when she heard the news that someone from SwissContact is hosting field schools in her village. “Let’s give it a last try,” Astuty attended one introduction meeting, “I want to see what they can do for my farm.”

Swisscontact is a development organization of the Swiss private sector that provides support to entrepreneurial individuals in developing countries. In 2010, a partnership between Mars and Swisscontact was setup, where Mars supports Swisscontact with the establishment of CDC/CVC and train the projects trainers, in the Province of Aceh, Indonesia. And based on years of experience in Indonesia, Mars also advises Swisscontact on the selection and propagation of superior clonal material and cost effective technology transfer systems such as Farmer Field Schools.

When recalled, Astuty said to join the field school for rehabilitation was probably the brightest decision her made. “All the villagers knew what CPB has done to my farm. If the school can teach me something to change my farm, then it must can change anyone else’s.”

Astuty attended the training course where she learned grafting, pruning, applying fertilizer, and other useful skills, which all aim at increasing her yield. She applied the skill and knowledge she learned into her farm, e.g. revitalized the ageing cocoa trees by applying side grafting, In contrast to most cocoa farmers’ common belief of having more leaves on the trees, frequent pruning provides an open canopy and less humidity for the cacao trees, which helps reduce CPB greatly. “Honestly speaking, I didn’t have much confidence for my farm at that time”, said Astuty, “none of us in my village has done anything like pruning before. I desperately wanted a rehabilitated farm, but I am not sure if I would success or not.”

Astuty’s farm quickly responded her hard work. She not only saved her farm, but also rehabilitated it into a better one. “before the infection, I used to achieve a yield of 60Kg per hector every week, but now the yield has increased to 90 -140 Kg per hector per week. “ The income from the farm supported her family daily expense, as well as paid 2 of her children’s education in university.

The rehabilitation of her farm impressed her neighbors from her village and villages nearby, they all asked Astuty for her

guidance. She is more than glad to share: each Friday is the scheduled training day to hold lectures, and on Saturday and Sundays she is on her way to visit their farms and offers onsite support.

On Dec 2012, Ibu Astuty was invited to represent other farmers in Aceh to speak in front of global cocoa stakeholders in the cocoa sustainability partnership general assembly meeting in Makassar. When asked about her children, Astuti answered with a smiled, “my oldest daughter has just graduated. She is young and beautiful and knows how to use computer. I guess there are some young boys good for her sitting here today,” the audience laughed. “what does she do?” someone from the audience asked. “She’s now working in a cocoa trading company, for her love of cocoa.” Said Astuty with her proud.

At the end of her speech, Ibu Astuti shared with us a song wrote by her self

Listen Here: Astuti’s Song of Cacao

So we are pleased to announce an agreement we’ve reached with Oxfam America for a plan of action to empower women in cocoa communities.   Both Oxfam and Mars Chocolate agree that an intentional approach across the sector is needed to improve the lives of women living in villages and towns where cocoa farming is dominant. We will be implementing a set of actions in the short, medium, and long-term that will help the industry evaluate and strengthen their current programs to ensure that women are able to both fully contribute to and benefit from development programs in cocoa.

This plan of action builds on the leadership Mars Chocolate has already demonstrated in empowering women. Mars Chocolate recognizes that the most effective way to address socio-economic challenges in cocoa communities around the world is to work comprehensively and holistically.  The Sustainable Cocoa Initiative we launched in 2009 operates under the principle of putting farmers first.  By helping farmers become more productive through better research, training, and a strong certification protocol, we believe we are also aiding them and their families improve their quality of life.

Within the Vision for Change program, Mars Chocolate has been listening to the concerns of women and working with women leaders in their communities to help develop community engagement plans.  In addition to strengthening the voice and role of women in community leadership, Mars Chocolate is also working in a targeted way on the economic empowerment of women, which we believe will benefit women in cocoa communities specifically and farmers as a whole.

The company understands that women invest significantly greater proportions of their disposable income in family and community well-being. We’ve learned that the economic empowerment of women is not only a tool for gender equity in its own right, but that it also has a powerful multiplier effect for the broader well-being of children, families and communities. Recently, Mars Chocolate funded six economic development projects within the Vision for Change program to train women in developing local enterprises in areas such as animal rearing and crop production, which benefits both the nutritional needs of families as well as the income of women who sell surplus production in local markets.

To achieve the goals of strengthening programs within the sector to empower women in cocoa communities, we’ve committed to the following actions:

• Completing a comprehensive assessment of the condition of women cocoa farmers in our Vision for Change (V4C) program – which provides cocoa farmers with training in updated agricultural methods and is a key element in the company’s Sustainable Cocoa Initiative – in Côte d’Ivoire by the end of this year.
• Signing the UN Women’s Empowerment Principles before May 1st.
• Developing and publishing a plan of action based on the assessment to ensure the Vision for Change program adequately addresses gender equity by April 1st of next year.
• Developing the foundation for a sector-wide assessment of gender equity by examining existing third party data on gender in the global cocoa sector and by using this review to identify knowledge gaps in 2014.
• Establishing a set of draft gender equity indicators that align with Vision for Change and can also be used across the global cocoa sector in conjunction with the V4C assessment.
• Using this review to advocate for and support a sector level review of gender equity in cocoa production through the sector-wide organizations by January 1, 2015.
• Support a sector level plan of action to address gender equity concerns by the same date.
• Reporting regularly on the condition of women in cocoa production in our top four cocoa origin countries by 2018 as a way of showing our commitment to transparency.
• Establish a plan of action to address in these origin countries as well by 2018.

Mars Chocolate has long been guided by the principle of Mutuality as one of our five Principles – this means we believe that everyone along the supply chain must benefit from the work we do. Our Sustainable Cocoa Initiative has also been guided by another principle – putting cocoa farmers first. We feel that this plan of action accords with these longstanding principles and we look forward to helping to improve the lives of women around the globe.

Read more about the agreement at Mars.com.

In the IFAD video, you’ll meet Ahmad Darise, a Sulwesian cocoa farmer, and his neighbor, Mimi Abudoho, both of whom were facing the challenges associated with decreasing yields at their cocoa farms.  Both Ahmad and Mimi are now attending the Cocoa Development Center in Indonesia, along with at least 500 other farmers in the country.  The video shows them learning new techniques that help them care for their trees and produce a higher quantity, and better quality cocoa.  The video also emphasizes how important the principle of Mutuality is to Mars Chocolate.

What is most encouraging about the video is that it illustrates the success that farmers in Sulawesi are having in learning new agricultural methods.  As the presentation state, a year ago, Mimi was only harvesting 50 kilograms of cocoa on her farm two times per year.  A year later, she’s harvesting 100 kilograms of cocoa twice a month.  During the same time period, Ahmad has increased his yields by 60 percent.

Watch the video below:

Rabobank uses Mars Chocolate’s Sustainable Cocoa Initiative as a successful example of close cooperation between upstream partners and the creation of a new supply chain. As the report notes, we made the unprecedented decision to release the cocoa genome into the public domain and to teach cocoa farmers about sustainable growth techniques in order to make sustainably sourced cocoa in order to help us achieve our goal of purchasing 100% of our cocoa supply from certified sustainable sources by 2020. This example has shown that by setting and reaching sustainability goals, companies such as Mars are able to increase yield while also benefiting growers and suppliers economically, socially, and environmentally. Barry Parkin, Mars Global Chocolate Procurement and Sustainability Head, is quoted in Rabobank’s release on the report, saying, “Mars believes that closer cooperation, both up the supply chain with suppliers, origin governments and NGO’s, and across the supply chain with other manufacturers, is critical to achieving the cocoa industry’s growth and sustainability goals.”

We’d like to thank Rabobank for their acknowledgement of our Sustainable Cocoa Initiative.