I've just returned from the most amazing week exploring the cocoa industry of the Solomon Islands. Enormous thanks to the farmers and community of this beautiful set of Islands as well as the International Trade Centre who made the trip possible.
We were selected together with a number of cocoa and chocolate professionals from across the UK to understand more about the cocoa trade in the Solomon Islands in order to facilitate development of trade relationships and growth.
We worked with cocoa from the Solomon Islands when we first opened York Cocoa Works back in 2018 so I was excited to meet the farmers who had provided us with cocoa and in particular to understand the challenges and opportunities of a cocoa growing community that once supplied cocoa to York's bigger chocolate factories.
We visited 2 of the main Island provinces, Guadalcanal and Malaita and experienced first hand the challenges with energy, transportation and connectivity that these amazing communities must overcome to cultivate and process cocoa.
I will certainly re-visit some of the experiences from the trip in forthcoming blog posts, but suffice to say it was an amazing trip with mountains to climb, rivers to cross and communities to connect with.
I was most intent on understanding more about the challenges that farming cocoa creates in different communities. One thing that strikes me the more I explore is that while cocoa cultivation is considered a meanwhile and competitive commodity occupation the industry suffers from lack of collaboration and infrastructure. We visited communities that had no connected road, driving for 5 hours on giant potholed roads and trekking up to 2 hours to reach some places. While on other, remote farms, lack of transportation reduces the available workforce and lack of consistent energy supplies reduces the opportunities for added value. In a geography with so much sunshine and surrounded by water it seems easy, if not somewhat naive to imagine solutions we consider so accessible could revolutionise a community and economy.
One of the highlights has to be the opportunity to connect with Agnes Pilapaso, we used Agnes' beans back in 2018. Agnes started farming back in 2004 with 3 hectares of cocoa on her father's farm. Agnes was 16 at the time and has been growing her farm and facility ever since. This last year Agnes built her own chocolate house where she now creates her own chocolate products. I couldn't help but be inspired by Agnes' drive and determination in the face of social challenges and an enormous up-hill struggle to ever grow, despite not having the resources to do so. Today Agnes has over 200,000 trees on 48 hectares. It's clear that Agnes has built a beautiful farm and community with great potential. I can't wait to make chocolate with her cocoa again.
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