Chocolate Offers New Hope for Saving Endangered Rainforest

Worldwatch Live Online Discussion

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde

December 5, 2003 - 3:00pm EDT

Cocoa—the main ingredient in chocolate—could become a major tool in conserving the northern part of Brazil's Atlantic Forest. In a new study titled Venture Capitalism for a Tropical Forest: Cocoa in the Mata Atl‚ntica, Worldwatch Senior Researcher Chris Bright outlines how Brazil could grow, manufacture, and export mainstream chocolate products that preserve forest, boost rural employment, and turn chocolate consumers into an international constituency for the Atlantic Forest as a whole.

Submit questions now and join author Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde, President of Brazilís Atlantic Rainforest Open University (UMA), for a live discussion of this "forest cocoa" strategy.

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Welcome to the latest online discussion at Worldwatch Live. Our guests today are Worldwatch Senior Researcher, Chris Bright, and the president of Brazilís Atlantic Rainforest Open University (UMA), Eduardo Athayde. Welcome, Chris and Eduardo.

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Hi Steve,

Thank you very much for the invitation.

Eduardo Athayde

Budapest. Hungary: According to the BBC, there is a serious over-production in cocoa; even the wide spred use of (slave!) child "manpower" cannot render the production profitable in some places. (Cf. also reports by the Oxfam.) How can be the planned new investment in Brazilian cocoa (mono)culture be feasible, and what effects will it have on cocoa prices on the world market?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Slave labor, or highly exploitative labor is a big concern in west African cocoa production--that's certainly true. (There isn't any slave labor in Brazil, by the way.) But the situation with cocoa supply is actually a bit more complicated than you suggest. World cocoa prices have risen substantially over the past couple of years and production has declined somewhat. (Cocoa prices are notoriously unstable!) Our paradigm, if it were widely adopted in the cocoa-producing region of Brazil would have the effect of reducing the amount of generic cocoa coming out of Brazil, and increasing the amount of specialty cocoa and chocolate. So it actually wouldn't encourage an oversupply.

The Hague, the Netherlands (Headoffice): Excuse me for posing maybe a very silly question (I have not been able to obtain your article yet). Is the proposal based on yield of natural cacao-trees or on yield of plantation cacao-trees?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : I don't think it's a silly question. Cacao in Bahia, the main cocoa-growing region of Brazil, is exotic. It's not native. So the production is all farm production, but most of the farming is done under modified native forest canopy. This is the system that we're trying to preserve, and reform--that is, make it more environmentally and socially sustainable.
Chris

Riqqa - Kuwait: Please, could you send more information about how Cocoa become a major tool in conserving the northern part of Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. Thanks

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : The chocolate runs an economy of 60 billion dollars/year and has the ability of giving its taste to everything it touches.
Chocolate is a locomotive of various other industries. With the name of chocolate you eat nuts, sugar, peanuts, coconuts, wheat, oils, fruits, etc.
The "Chocolate Farm" developed in the state of Bahia, Brazil, produces chocolate in the farm using other products from the atlantic rain forest, generating incomes, jobs and consequently paying taxes locally.
The idea is to agregate value locally, before export the raw material of chocolate directly from the farms.

Eduardo Athayde

Canterbury, Kent: A recent paper by the Rural Development Forestry Network on cocoa farms in southern Cameroon has demonstrated the important contribution that is made by other NTFPs, which grow side by side with cacao trees under ìcabruca-likeî shade canopy, to the financial and nutritional requirements of rural households, as well as being a significant source of medicinal plants. Eduardo and Chris, is there any evidence of farmers and farm workers making similar use of the chocolate forest in Bahia as they do in Cameroon? Chris, in ìChocolate could bring the forest backî, you briefly refer to current research on polycultural agroforestry systems being conducted by CEPLAC, IESB, the Mars Company and UESC. Can you elaborate on this please?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : The Cameroonian situation is really interesting and in some respects compatible with what has happened in Brazil--at least as far as cocoa cultivation becoming a de facto form of forest restoration in landscapes that are otherwise largely deforested. (I understand that this situation doesn't apply to all cocoa-growing areas in Cameroon, but it does to some.) In Brazil, there is some production of other more-or-less forest compatible crops on the cocoa farms--acai palm, for example. And there is this broader academic interest, which you mention. My sense is that the polycultural systems under development by UESC and others are still largely academic projects and not yet things that the farmers are widely adopting.
Chris

Lima and Oxapampa: Dear Chris & Eduardo, I know some ares of the northern Mata Atlantica because of my work with the German Development Service (DED)in Brazil from 1994-2000. My question: Is your program or proposal linked to the 'Systema agroforestal multy-estrato / sucesion natural", based on the work of Ernst Goetsch in Bahia? Ernst managed to control in his agroforestry system more or less the fungus disease called in Portuguese "varzora de bruxa", which has limited the cacao production in Bahia to a great extend. Is this fungus now under control in Bahia? Another limitation in the recent years was the very low price for cacao beans. As you talk about "new hope", has the price improved during the last years, or/and discovered you new organic markets? Saludos de Joachim / Peru.

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Yes, our recent study does in fact cite Ernst Goetsch's work. I've never met him but I have some acquaintance with his writing and I think his field work is tremendously promising. The witches' broom pathogen that you mention is still present in Bahia and there is not prospect of removing it, but it has become less of an economic threat, primarily because fungus-resistant cocoa cultivars are now available. Cocoa prices have rebounded over the last couple of years, so cocoa farming has once again become more profitable. But cocoa trading prices are very unstable and that is why we recommend that Brazilian growers shift away from an emphasis on "generic cocoa" and towards a higher value product--manufactured chocolate that is "forest friendly," and priced to contain a "forest premium" to be spent on preserving and restoring the Mata Atlantica.

Bonn, Germany: Is that possible to implement the "forest cacao" strategy in Southeast Asia such as Indonesia, since more farmer likely to grow "full-sun cacao" than traditional practices?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Our "forest cocoa" approach was designed specifically for Brazil and might not work very well in an Indonesian context, since as you say, most cocoa there is sun-grown. But that doesn't mean that there couldn't be other environmentally benign ways of growing cocoa that would answer to Indonesia's conditions. Francois Ruf, a major cocoa authority who knows the Indonesian situation quite well, has pointed out that some small-scale farmers are using cocoa to reclaim degraded, deforested bottomlands on the island of Sulawesi. This is a really interesting experiment, and worth watching closely.
Chris

Lima and Oxapampa: Dear Chris & Eduardo, many of the remaining hotspots of biodiversity in the Mata Atlantica and the Amazon region are more or less saved by protected areas, like National Parks, etc.. (some only on the paper) not only in Brazil but also in Bolivia, Peru, etc.. Bufferzone management around this areas is incresingly important not only to buffer the protected areas but also to provide sound agricultural practices and save economic benefits to the people in this zones. Because of the agroforestry systems, which are needed for cacao production, this system, if the market existes, offers surely a hope. Not only to the Mata Atlantic area but also to some regions in the Amazon of Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, etc.. Is your program or proposal only limited to the northern Mata Atlantica area or you include other rainforest areas of Latin America too? Saludos de Peru de Joachim.

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Yes, we would agree with you about the promise that agroforestry (cocoa and otherwise) offers for buffering remaining fragments of native primary forest. The publication we just released focuses specifically on the cocoa farms of Bahia, Brazil, but we believe that elements of our paradigm could be adapted to good effect in other areas. Incidentally, within the northern portion of the Mata Atlantica, there are many forest fragments, both primary and high-quality secondary, that are not officially protected so it's not just a question of buffering parkland, although that would certainly be a good idea! (In Bahia most of the remaining forest is privately owned.)
Chris

Geneva: Dear Mr. Bright and Mr. Athayde - your study sounds extremely interesting and I would be very interested to have a look at it. Is it available on the Internet for downloading or accessing? Kind regards, Marianne Jacobsen

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : The study is on www.worldwatch.org and will be also published at www.wwiuma.org.br, the Digital Library of UMA-Atlantic Forest Open University, in Brazil (Portuguese), where all the publications are open for free download.

Vancouver, BC Canada: Will the marketed chocolate be certified Fair Trade, or simply "Fairly traded"? Clarification if needed using coffee: ìFairî is a relative term. "Certified Fair Trade" means: 1. Guaranteed floor price for farmer (currently $US1.26); 2. Access to reasonable pre-harvest financing / credit; 3. Long term relationships; 4. Environmental & other sustainable concerns incorporated. 5. Democratically run organizations; 6. Independently certified (by eg, FLO). See www.fairtrade.net ìFairly tradedî implies organizations that can still be doing wonderful efforts for the farmers, but who, especially if they are small, feel the independent certification costs (point 6) are basically money taken out of farmersí pockets (and, as well, may not be democratically run, point 5). My stance is that certification is a necessary step to gain the trust of mainstream consumers, and point 5 should also be upheld. That said, in this transitional period, I maintain broader parameters, though want to keep pushing non-certified initiatives to move towards certification, and remain vigilante against those who want the FT label but have dubious substance behind it. Thank you for your efforts and forums! It is unlikely that I will be free during the live session.

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Thanks for spelling out the fair trade requirements. One of the coauthors of our report (Radhika Sarin) did a thorough review of those requirements as we were developing our recommendations. We strongly favor fair trade but our current report does not recommend it explicitly because we concluded that we had several broader political and conceptual hurdles to get over before we could address that issue effectively. As we move our project into a pilot stage, we want to return to the possibilities for fair trade certification. But I should mention that in the Brazilian context, the top priority in working out labor policy is not fair trade per se, but establishing a solid working relationship with the MST, or Landless Workers' Movement.
Chris

Toronto, Canada: I am interested in hearing how environmentally sustianable food crops like cocoa, could also be socialy sustainable. You might have heard about the association of the worst forms of child labour and cocoa growing in Ivory Coast, West Africa. Child workers on cocoa farms are working in hazardeous conditions. While this may not specificaly apply to Brazil, clearly poverty in the region makes the use of cheap child labour a possibility. One that must be addressed with any talk on sustainability. Would you agree?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Yes, we certainly agree that poverty alleviation is essential to progress in forest conservation, especially in a biome as highly populated as the Mata Atlantica, which is where most of Brazil's people live! That's why the recommendations in our report address both forest conservation and social issues.
Chris

Richmond, VA: This project seems similar to what is going on in the coffee industry with shade-grown, fair-trade coffees coming on the market. Still, demand seems to be slow for these products. What are your ideas for marketing forest cocoa?

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : You're right--our cocoa model is similar to these types of coffees. But we believe that the market figures justify a much more optimistic view than you appear to entertain. I don't have the statistics at my desk, but you might consult the FLO International website for Fair Trade sales growth, which is actually pretty impressive, and there are some references in our paper on the specialty coffee situation. As for the marketing of "forest cocoa," we're not yet at a stage where we've had to develop a marketing strategy, but I would refer you to the food section of the New York Times on Wednesday, I think it was, which contained a big article on an incipient up-scale chocolate boom. Something we'd very much like to build on!
Chris

Steve Conklin, Worldwatch Institute: Thanks for joining us today, Chris and Eduardo, and a big thanks to all of our participants as well.

Chris Bright and Eduardo Athayde : Okay, thanks Steve! Sorry we didn't have time for everyone's questions but we would like to thank everyone who joined the discussion.
Eduardo and Chris