Initiatives in Cacao Origin Regions

In 2017, Felchlin launched a project for the women's community in Ambalavelona, the area where our cacao is grown. This organisation was founded by employees of our partner and is actively involved in cacao at the local level. The aim of the project is to financially support the local women's community in setting up a tree nursery for cocoa trees. Thanks to the project, an infrastructure is created to raise young cacao trees with the help of our partner's knowledge. The organisation then sells the young cocoa seedlings to the local farmers, who in turn provide us with the cocoa as raw material.

Thanks to support from the Cacao Fund, Grenada received a local composting facility. A significant step towards successful value creation in agriculture and a long-term benefit for the natural environment and the farmers: high-quality compost firstly conserves the soil and secondly stimulates growth on the cultivated land.

The Centro Agronómico Tropical de Investigación y Enseñanza (CATIE) in Costa Rica is working on improving the virus resistance of cacao fruits and researching into new quality concepts and ways of improving cacao’s adaptability to climate change. Felchlin was participating in the research, whilst helping implement the results at the local plantations to ensure healthy harvests and enhance the income and living conditions of the farming families in the region.

With a school built in 2014 in the north of Madagascar, Felchlin supports the people in the area of origin Ambalavelona-Ambanja. Aspiring cacao farmers and agronomy students have the opportunity to attend courses on cacao cultivation. In addition to the construction of the new school premises, Felchlin designed and financed suitable teaching materials in the form of learning booklets for the students in Ambalavelona and the surrounding area. These describe how cacao is grown, so that the students gain important knowledge about regional agriculture and the cultivation of quality cacao. The lessons are taught by our partner in Sambirano.

Yayra Glover, born and raised in Ghana, studied in Switzerland and started his family here. He had the vision of generating a secure income for the farmers in his home country through the sustainable cultivation of organic cocoa and thus counteracting poverty and the rural exodus. With the approval of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Yayra Glover was the first person to be allowed to sell cocoa from the Suhum District directly to Felchlin and has done pioneering work with the whole project. You can find out more about this project in the documentary film "Zartbitter".

With the tree project in Ecuador, Felchlin directly supported the planting of young cacao trees in the Aprocane cooperative in 2014/2015. The trained forester Henrris Castillo Mina was the project manager on site. He carefully took care of the seedlings and incorporated his knowledge of sustainability and the best locations for the plants when planting the several thousand cacao trees.