Alyssa Jade McDonald-Bärtl 
This week we advised an impact investor who thought it would be a nice idea to cold call farmers and survey them out of the blue. They wanted to know if farmers of a specific crop in a specific region are prepared for climate change and how they could offer philanthropic funding to help. They … Read more
1. FCCI Cacao Academy With the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute, we launched the FCCI Cacao Academy in response to COVID19-physical distancing. The purpose of this is to provide immediate and impactful support farmers with the training they need in a digital format they ask for. Here you can read the concept note from Lyss … Read more
In the last months we have prioritised supporting the VOICEnetwork with a COVID-19 cocoa farm response. While we had actually planned to be working on mid-season harvest engagement, the coronavirus implications dramatically changed priorities through the cacao world. Dramatically, we saw extension services stop due to physical distancing measures. Cacao sales slowed or stopped for … Read more
Evidence suggests that cacao farmer training in the last five years is not effective; and multifactorial impacts exist (health, livelihood, ecology)
Farmer nutrition for livelihood and productivity. Cacao training needs to include more farmer nutrition-related curriculum to contribute to farmer health, productivity and livelihood. Within the topic of health, issues of (mal)nutrition, water/sanitation and chemical use and access to health care have typically been the key topics which the research has revolved around. Regarding food security and … Read more
Corona virus (COVID-19) brings a double burden to cocoa farmers. In early April, Antonie Fountain, Friedel Hütz-Adams and I worked from three key reasons for cacao and chocolate industry to respond directly to the COVID-19 cocoa farmer impact. It is published directly on the VOICEnetwork website here: 1 Producing countries of cacao are not prepared … Read more