Procacao

Procacao

THE IMPORTANCE OF A SUSTAINABLE COCOA PRODUCTION

Around 40% of the cocoa produced worldwide comes from the Ivory Coast. The country is therefore the largest cocoa producer in the world. One in four inhabitants of the country depends directly or indirectly on the cultivation of these seeds; in total, six million people live on cocoa. Most of the cocoa grows in small family-run plantations, which, however, after years of cultivation, with obsolete agricultural methods, no longer offer a sufficient yield for living. As a result, to make room for new plantations, rainforest areas have been illegally felled in the past, destroying the habitat of many species.

To avoid overexploitation of land and rainforest and, at the same time, to ensure harvests, cocoa farmers need to be trained on modern cultivation methods. Thanks to the refresher courses, growers will be able to successfully manage their business in the future, helping meet the global cocoa need in a sustainable way.

With the PROCACAO project we demonstrate that agriculture and environmental protection can coexist also in the case of raw materials such as cocoa. Therefore, Lidl offers an important contribution to promoting a more sustainable cocoa production.

 

WHAT IS PROCACAO

Kakao Video

The PROCACAO project was started in 2012 by Lidl in collaboration with GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit), the German agency for international development cooperation, and with the Ivorian agency for agricultural development (ANADER). More than 18.000 cocoa farmers have already followed PROCACAO training, obtaining tangible results. For example, the use of pesticides has been reduced, land is less exploited and, already in the early years, the same cultivated area has had a substantially higher yield.

Since 2019, the training program has been so successful that it finances itself and is carried out independently by ANADER and the local government.

 

PROCACAO in numbers

trained local farmers

Trainings