Cocoa Technical Overview

Technical Approaches

Cocoa Technical Overview

Lutheran World Relief (LWR) has a long history of strengthening livelihoods in the cocoa sector. LWR employs a climate-smart agricultural value chain approach to improving access to inputs, technical resources and capacity, post-harvest processing and export markets. We promote gender and age diversity in the membership and leadership of farming cooperatives and encourage the use of agroforestry in the management of cocoa crops, thereby helping farmers not only produce more cocoa and preserve the land’s fertility and biodiversity, but also realize an important triple bottom line of people, profit and planet.

LWR strengthens local capacity as we promote environmentally responsible cocoa husbandry through technical and extension support. Our focus on agroforestry systems, for example, offers solutions for reforestation, shade management, disease control and adaptation to climate change, all while encouraging farmers to intersperse food crops with cocoa plants for increased food security. Producers reap the benefits of increased yields and healthy soil and trees. LWR helps farmers improve cocoa quality by improving post-harvest processing through enhanced fermentation, drying and infrastructure and by identifying cocoa varieties that are in demand by the market. Our innovative programs utilize information technology to expand our reach and bring new techniques for fermentation and drying as a means of improving smallholder farmers’ lives and reaching economies of scale.

Download Now Jun 13, 2022