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Is cocoa farming profitable?
Can cocoa farmers earn a decent living?

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​PAYING A PREMIUM FOR QUALITY

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The team at SUCOFA believes that an effective way to help cocoa farmers earn more and become self-sufficient is to support them at the farm level through different programs  rather than trying to set price controls that often fail.

​Only in extremely rare cases do chocolate companies purchase cocoa from farms. The cocoa supply chain can involve up to 12 different steps as cocoa is moved from the farming village to the port and then to the chocolate manufacturing facility, through a series of intermediaries.

SUCOFA is presently hoping from sponsors and world wishers for support and sponsorship of this project which aims to tackle the complex purchasing process of middlemen in the cocoa supply chain in Cameroon, we aim to ensure that farmers receive a fair price which will allow them to invest in techniques that bring out the flavors of the community, and strictly we are planning to reduce the complexity of middlemen exploitation of farmers without offering them an adequate compensation for their produce. This project at it final achievement state incorporated together with other SUCOFA prospective projects in the nearest future will raise the Cameroon cocoa production to 90% from its current level of 30% in the next five years. This is of great magnitude because presently in Cameroon most  cocoa producers have some choice over what they grow. For example, a cocoa farmer who cannot make a living from growing cocoa may switch to producing palm oil. The team at SUCOFA strongly believe that middlemen exploitation with Rig scales and misrepresentation of precises to farmers is contributing 10% decline of cocoa production in Cameroon.​

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SUCOFA Community Weigh Station and Co-operative (CWS) project aims to help cocoa farmers attain higher prices for their produce by providing warehousing facilities and transporting members' crops to market. Construction of new fermentation boxes for farmers, construction of drying centers in communities with high cocoa production where farms are closer to each other, and helped improve the quality of their cocoa. SUCOFA also aim to set up a wormery to turn waste into organic compost, this organic compost will be distributed to farmers for almost free. When the village sells its beans to the middlemen, the farmers don't know the exact weight, price of their product and the premiums they may get for supplying quality organic cocoa beans. Middlemen contribute nothing to the cocoa farmer’s communities; they merely own a purchasing capital in their bank accounts or certain asset and have the ability to make money from exploiting cocoa farmers without actually doing any work themselves. We seeks to ensure a more equitable treatment of producers and thus minimizing exploitation of labor forces in the cocoa growing communities of Cameroon.

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