Organic Cacoa

[Chris]

Recently a friend who is an organic produce buyer for a US company, at my urging quoted prices for some organic cacoa products and a few other products from producers in the DR. The prices quoted were consistently higher than what she was quoted out of other Central American countries. I could not understand the prices at the time, but now I know why...
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=14596

There is some technical problem with the article in dominican today - parts of it is duplicated... So, a quote:

"Until very recently, almost all Dominican cocoa exports were controlled by a few wealthy families, who could count on buying cocoa from poor small scale farmers at low prices and without competition from other buyers. However, this began to change in the 1990's when farmers started to work with one another to create their own cocoa marketing enterprise.

That effort built CONACADO, a cooperative owned by 15,000 small scale Dominican farmers, and now the world's largest exporter of certified organic cocoa. For the traditionally dominant cocoa exporters, CONACADO's grass-roots success has meant more competition, less business, and lower profits, as CONACADO now exports 20% of the country's cocoa, often to high-end buyers who had traditionally shunned Dominican cocoa.

But instead of supporting this home-grown success that is bringing economic development and safe, sustainable agriculture to the nation's countryside, the government has agreed to a recommendation from CONACADO's competitors to impose a punitive tax on CONACADO members, and other small-scale cocoa producers."

The business practices here in the DR are truly strange.

[Hillbilly]

That is like killing the gallo in the funda

HB

[Keith R]

One step forward, two steps back. Sigh.

[Rick Snyder]

Chris,
That article was very interesting due to the fact that it had to do with the tax being imposed on the little guys. This tax was started 25 May 2004 and since that time CONACADO has paid $9.86 million in "solidarity" taxes according to the article. The article goes on to state, “In their fight to repeal the tax, CONACADO has pointed out that the National Cocoa Commission does not have the authority to impose taxes, let alone to do so in an arbitrary manner that benefits one sector of the cocoa industry at the expense of another. Further, the tax was not created by a law, as required by the Dominican constitution.”

My question is why have they been paying this tax if it is illegal? Wait, that was a stupid question! Why have they waited 2 years to complain about this to the president? I just seems to me that as a law must go through the houses then the president or be formulated through a decree to become official how is it that this tax got on the books? It has been either legal for 2 years or illegal and if it has been illegal for all this time then why wasn’t the judicial branch involved? The article further states, “Since 2004, CONACADO and other producers' organizations have pursued other avenues to repeal the tax”, but fails to state what those avenues were.

It is underreporting like this or the failure of CONACADO to report their prior actions that cause readers like me to throw up our arms and say WTF.

Rick

[Chris]

I don't know about any of that Rick. I just know that we tried to bring some business to an organic sector of the market and the prices were not competitive.

[Drake]

Cacao is one of the most environmentally favorable crops available for growing in humid forest areas. It needs to be grown in a shaded environment that maintains a forest canopy. A large part of the forest eco-system can then be maintained.
Most Cacao is mostly organic anyway as they are resistant to many diseases so don’t require pesticides. They are planted with nitrogen fixing trees like Amapola or Piñon Cubano so they don’t need fertilizer. The hard part is keeping the weeds down whilst they are small, so herbicides are usually needed.

For commercial purposes the issue here is not so much if the product is organic or not but whether it is fermented or not after harvest. The best chocolate is made from fermented cacao. This involves after the pods are split being placed in shaded boxes and turned every certain time until they are ready. Here in the DR 90% of the Cacao is harvested and strewn in the Sun for direct drying. In the world market fermented Cacao fetches a much higher price but locally the middle men buy this prepared Cacao at a slightly higher price than the traditional prepared.

Firstly greater value should be paid to the fermented Cacao producers and then programs should be introduced to educate farmers how to produce fermented Cacao. Belgium chocolate comes from fermented Cacao whilst most Dominican Cacao is sent to the US as fill for the big Chocolate companies like Hersheys. This could be changed with some intuition.

[Rick Snyder]

Drake I wish to thank you for that quick introductory lesson concerning cacao as I didn't know all that.

In the OP the words 'illegal tax' in the article is what jumped out and screamed at me. Having lived here a couple of days and seeing how the DR operates it just makes me wonder what recourse has been followed concerning this issue and if there will be any further coverage by the media to keep people such as myself abreast of the situation.

I can understand the issue of a greater value being paid for fermented cacao due to the time restraint required for drying. Unfortunately the news article fails to mention any of the internal workings of CONACADO or the wealthy families as to the processing of cacao and only mentions the tax. This 'tax' should be followed.

Rick

[Chris]

Yes, thank-you Drake.

Rick, here is the site of Equal Exchange, they are spearheading this effort.

http://www.equalexchange.com/farmer-partner/news

[Rick Snyder]

Thank you for the link Chris. Did a little searching to see what I could find out about this imposed tax which basically came up fruitless. Here is an article titled “Another reason not to tour the DR”. It’s almost at the bottom of the page. I also found this concerning cocoa farming in Africa which was interesting. This archived DR1 news article from 2004 . Here is another article on CONACADO and here ¾ down the page.

Rick

[Chris]

This is unfortunately not main-stream news Rick, and we will probably not stay informed on it by reading main-stream news. Your best to follow up if you are interested, is to speak to Equal Exchange themselves.

Generally this is not a new thing in organic farming. I wrote a blog piece in two parts for the GT blog and perhaps you'd like to scan through it http://www.dr1.com/blogs/entry.php?u...ment&e_id=1079 The DR & Organics, The Idealism & the Reality...