Sustainable cocoa farming

Sustainable cocoa farming is a multi-faceted concept. These days, it extends beyond profitability to embrace other socio-economic pillars such as forest protection and landscape regeneration, the gender approach and respect for women's rights, farm productivity and farmers' livelihoods, child labour monitoring and the protection of children's rights and physical traceability.

SODECAO acts on many of these levers to contribute to the sustainability of the sector:

Protection des forêts et régénération des paysages : SODECAO encourages intensive agroforestry, which makes it possible to conserve trees when setting up a cocoa farm, and raises awareness among cocoa farmers of the need to create farms only in non-permanent forest areas and to restore degraded forests by planting shade trees. .

Approche genre et respect des droits des femmes : sensibilisation des femmes sur le potentiel d’autonomisation économique de la filière cacao, accompagnement des femmes souhaitant créer une cacaoyère (don de plants, conseils pour l’aménagement de l’espace, don en petits matériels et intrants agricoles ;

Productivité des exploitations agricoles et le revenu vital des exploitants : technical capacity building of producers on GAP, distribution of quality plant material, promotion of diversification through the production and distribution of plantain seedlings, dissemination of agronomic innovations such as small-scale irrigation, structuring of producers within organizations to encourage creating economies of scale

La surveillance du travail des enfants : raising awareness among producers on the prohibition of child labour on cocoa farms, the official ban relating to children under the age of 21.

Physical traceability: SODECAO provides growers with certified seedlings whose physical origin (seed fields) and genetic origin (clones present in the seed fields) are known and traceable. This means that farmers who have set up farms using SODECAO plant material are able to trace their production itinerary back to the plant material.