A partnership between the World Agroforestry Centre and Mars Incorporated will see smallholder cocoa producers in Côte d'Ivoire benefit from increased yields and greater returns.

The private-public partnership, Vision for Change: Sustainable Cocoa Communities is a aimed at improving the livelihoods of farmers through research on developing improved cocoa varieties, securing markets for agroforestry products and quantifying the potential for trees on farms for climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Director General of the World Agroforestry Centre, Dr Tony Simons, said the project “is a long-term collaboration with national institutions, industry peers and others that will apply research and technology transfer to increase yields for cocoa farmers”.

Mars believes the initial pilot involving 150,000 farmers could potentially be scaled up to reach millions of farmers across West Africa, providing the chocolate company with the quality and quantity of cocoa they require to meet a growing demand.

The majority of cocoa is grown by smallholder farmers and there is little new land available to increase the number of farms. Therefore, the increase in production which is needed must come from rehabilitated cocoa farms.

Read the media release: Making chocolate an affordable luxury