Renewing Cocoa Farms and Diversifying Incomes in Togo
Across cocoa-growing regions, cocoa yields are declining as farms age. When cocoa trees get old, they produce only a fraction of what they used to, leaving farmers in a quandary. One solution is to plant new trees, but seedlings need to be grown and made readily available to the farmers who need them.
For some farmers in Togo, it is hard to get new cocoa seedlings, as they must travel long distances, spending both time and money in the process.
This was the situation cocoa farmer Ali Kodzovi found himself in two years ago. A lack of access to seedlings led him and the 24 members of his cooperative to join forces and set up a nursery.
Through the Midjo project, funded by the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), we provided a three-year programme to help them establish the nursery and become fully autonomous. Alongside financial support for site management, we also supplied the necessary equipment and plant material, and provided technical support.
Each year, the seedlings produced by the nursery are sold at a discount to cooperative members and other neighbouring cooperatives. This helps them to build the working capital necessary to maintain the business in the long term.
In the first year, the Ali and his associates planted 5,000 seedlings, of which 4,000 survived — but they weren’t going to stop there. Encouraged by the results, they worked even harder.
Three times a week, they took turns watering, maintaining, and monitoring the nursery, and on Wednesday afternoons, after their Village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) meeting, some members headed straight to the nursery to continue their work.
In the next season, they aimed higher and produced 10,000 viable plants, which are now mature enough to be transplanted.
All this means they no longer need to travel to find seedlings, and other cooperatives can come to them for supply. It has not been easy to balance their time between the nursery and their other activities, but they have persevered and never given up.
Now they are already dreaming bigger, with plans to raise up to 20,000 seedlings and provide coffee seedlings too. Ali sums it up with a local proverb: “We work very hard today so we can eat tomorrow.”
