CHUAO – BEST IN CLASS CACAO Chuao is known as the most mythical, famous and expensive cacao worldwide. Only a limited quantity of beans are produced each year in the mountains surrounding the village of Chuao. These beans are -some claim- among the best beans you could hope to discover. 450 YEARS OF HISTORY OF …
Tuta and Juliana Aquino are Brazilian natives that own and run a Cacao Origin located in the State of Bahia-Brazil, where they produce speciality cacao beans since 2016 with a small yearly production of 20 Metric Tons. Besides providing their Vale Potumuju beans to local Bean to Bar makers, they also started, in 2018, their …
STARTING AND DEVELOPING THE BAHIA CACAO BUSINESS Read More »
Koa is a Swiss-Ghanaian business that focuses on creating a new revenue generation stream for cocoa farmers by processing cocoa pulp into juice, concentrate and Powder. Whereas cocoa farmers rely on the cocoa pulp for cocoa bean fermentation, its excesses lead to food waste and elongation of the fermentation process. So, harvesting the excess cocoa …
Côte d’Ivoire has recently benefited from bouts of rain followed by sunshine, which has diminished the concerns of Black Pod disease that we reported a few weeks earlier. In the main crop-growing region of Soubre, rains were below average. There is less black pod disease because the sun is out. If the weather continues to …
My Analysis on Cocoa Diaries Interview with CFAN President. My Thoughts First, I think I can fairly say that since Mr Adeola is the Nigerian Cocoa Farmers Association of Nigeria’s president and one of the leading figures championing the Nigerian Cocoa sector Renaissance, his thoughts and opinions reflect close to the consensus of the team …
Nicaragua: A Land of Flavour Diversity With a yearly production of around 10,000 tonnes, cacao is small beer in the Nicaraguan economy. Especially compared to coffee of which the country produces some 140,000 tonnes per year. Though small in size, the cacao industry has grown steadily and is expected to have a yearly production of …
Tuta and Juliana Aquino are Brazilian natives that own and run a Cacao Origin located in the State of Bahia-Brazil, where they produce specialty cacao beans since 2016 with a small yearly production of 20 Metric Tons. Besides providing their Vale Potumuju beans to local Bean to Bar makers, they also started, in 2018, their …
NEW SERIES! RUNNING A TREE TO BAR BUSINESS: PRIME CACAO – THE INSIDE STORY Read More »
SPIDTECH, an app that collects data from users to analyse and create a map showing the distribution of pests and plant diseases in different parts of the Philippines, includes remote monitoring. This feature is valuable as it facilitates data collection on pests and diseases. We found the app on the Google Play store with the …
SPIDTECH IDENTIFIES PESTS WITH YOUR SMARTPHONE CAMERA Read More »
Cadmium and lead in Cocoa is a serious problem which we have written about before when the ICCO planned research, and when the IAEA became involved in helping to track the movement of heavy metals through the plant. Now a detailed scientific report funded through a California Proposition 65 settlement was released today by As …
RESEARCH REVEALS POTENTIAL REDUCTIONS OF LEAD AND CADMIUM IN COCOA TREES Read More »
During my master’s Thesis in 2019, I reflected on almost all the known initiatives the Ghana Government and industry stakeholders announced to have implemented to address the livelihood changes of smallholder farmers. I concluded that: It is not real for smallholder farmers to sustainably gain sufficient income to solve their income-driven challenges if they attempt …
Cocoa farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire are likely to suffer poor yields as they cannot afford the cost of fertilizer, reports Reuters. The price has doubled and, in some cases, tripled from a year ago, farmers lamented. Nitrogen-based fertilizer such as nitrogen-phosphorus-potassium (NPK) costs between 36,000 and 38,000 CFA francs ($57-$60) for a 50kg …
CÔTE D’IVOIRE AND GHANA EXPECT LOWER YIELDS AS FERTILISER BECOMES UNAFFORDABLE Read More »
The killing Elephant The dead owner lay right in front of our small cacao farm in Sre Ampom, in the hills of Mondulkiri, Cambodia. He should have known better. His male elephant had already been unpredictable, restless and aggressive for the past week. The bull was in what they call a ‘musth’, a natural phenomenon …
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