Cargill Cocoa & Chocolate
17,000 farmers engaged in Cargill cocoa trainings in 2008 (21/1/2009)
We are proud to announce that through our diverse training programme we have reached over 17,000 farmers in Côte d'Ivoire in 2008. For many years we have been training farmers in better farming practices such as; weeding, pruning, reducing loss from pests and disease and establishing good fermentation and drying processes. The aim of this programme is to continue to improve the quality and yield of farmers' crops to ultimately increase their income.
Farmer field school programme
In the Soubré area, we introduced a farmer field school programme, which has shown very positive results to date. Statistics indicate a 30% increase in farm productivity and a significant improvement in bean quality. Higher yield and a better price due to improved quality have increased farmers' income by a staggering 40%. The results demonstrate the high engagement of the farmers to our training; an intensive and ongoing programme which takes place every 2 weeks at the site of the farming villages and is carried out by the (the national rural development agency) Anader. Around 40 farmers per farmer field school attend these sessions and they are encouraged to participate and share their learnings with the other farmers from their village. The objective of the farmer field school training is to bring farmers and cooperatives to a level of UTZ CERTIFIED certification.