46 • ICCO Report • C&CI May 2013
Key players join forces to target pests and diseases T
ogether with the ICCO’s on-going project to help cocoa producers limit the harmful effects of pesticide residues, one of which can to be to see their cocoa shipments turned away at the ports, the latest scheme highlights two big issues that the agency has been focusing on in recent years.
Many other projects sponsored by it and now concluded have been aimed at helping cocoa farmers fight pests and diseases (which the ICCO estimates are responsible for the loss of up to 40 per cent of the potential world cocoa crop every season, inevitably damaging farmers’ earning power). It has also organized workshops to alert farmers to the dangers of the inappropriate use of pesticides and produced and disseminated information on current regulations imposed by importing countries on permitted residue levels for cocoa imports.
The ICCO is keen that growers and other stakeholders along the cocoa supply chain should be aware of the standards they have to meet, which is one of the key objects of the on-going pesticides project now running in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria and Togo, but scheduled to conclude shortly.
Different standards
make life difficult The three main importers – the EU, the US and Japan – all have different regulations, which do not make the producers’ life any easier. Ideally the ICCO – which has set up a working group to monitor legislation on food safety generally – would like to see one common standard, along with a standardised method of assessing residue levels.
In the short term, however, it wants to ensure that cocoa farmers have all the information needed to follow “best practice” as far as the amount of pesticide used is concerned and that that its application is properly monitored.
The ICCO wants to help farmers deal with pests and diseases (photo: Neil Palmer, CIAT)
The ICCO is joining forces with the European Cocoa Association (ECA) and two leading chocolate manufacturers, Mars and Mondelez International, in a project to cut losses from pests and diseases, as
Robin Stainer reports, and hopes that further companies will join the scheme, which is being partly financed by the Common Fund for Commodities (CFC)
Among the various issues being followed by the ICCO’s new monitoring group, for instance, is the proposed move by the EU to impose tighter rules relating to the cadmium content of chocolate and other cocoa products. This is of particular concern to Latin American countries, such as Ecuador, because of the high concentration of naturally-occurring cadmium – which is absorbed by the plants – in the soil in their cocoa regions. These countries produce most of the world’s so-called “fine or flavour cocoa”, which sells at a premium and goes into gourmet products.
Tackling pests and diseases
The ICCO’s latest project, which was launched at a workshop in Ghana in April, aims to boost the capacity of African cocoa farmers to tackle the cocoa pests and diseases that are the main challenges to the development of a sustainable cocoa economy and thereby improve productivity – the level of which across Africa lags well behind that achieved in Indonesia. Another objective is to improve surveillance in the region to ensure the
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