Helping Farmers To Fight Climate Change

Divine Chocolate are delighted to join hands with HALBA, Switzerland to contribute to sustainable livelihoods for cocoa farmers of the Kuapa Kokoo Farmer’s Union in Ghana through a multi-stakeholder approach across income diversification, climate resilience and biodiversity conservation.

As a result of this collaboration, Divine Chocolate will finance seeds for annual crops for 120 farmers within 30 hectares designated for Dynamic Agroforestry. Dynamic Agroforestry is a natural farming system that combines a wide variety of trees with crops, allowing farmers to grow diverse food staples like yam, maize, cassava, alongside cash crops such as cocoa and banana. Crucially, this system increases biodiversity and tree cover, which is vital to the long-term environmental sustainability of the region. With its contribution, the Divine Chocolate Producer Support and Development (PS&D) programme supports the efforts of HALBA and its project partners to,

- Enhance biodiversity
- Increase soil fertility
- Support food security, and
- Increase farmer income.

Furthermore, Divine Chocolate is supporting the Dynamic Agroforestry Project (DAF) by integrating DAF participants through Divine and Kuapa Kokoo’s Adult Literacy and Numeracy programme. This programme aims to increase levels of literacy and numeracy among Kuapa Kokoo farmers, especially women so that inequalities they have faced historically can be addressed. Desired results are increased participation of Kuapa Kokoo farmers in decision making, increased capacity to diversify their livelihoods, and better access to education and training for women in good agricultural practices and farm management.

Issues faced within the cocoa sector are systemic and long-standing and require multi-stakeholder and innovative approaches to overcome them. Divine Chocolate is proud to partner with HALBA to pilot a new era of collaboration opposed to competition. Sharing best practices within farmer led programmes, the two chocolate companies hope to learn from each other and path the way forward.