Forum Activity for @Alan Griffith

FAIR TRADE AND ORGANIC CERTIFICATION FROM THE EYES OF A PRODUCER

Posted in: Opinion

Hi Samantha,Well firstly a very hearty thanks for your detailed reply. Just great to get as I've been on the 'how does the cocoa industry work?' track for the last 6-9 months and, while making progress, there are still a lot of unknowns. Surprise surprise.I'll work through your points and valuable comments and see how it shakes out. Hope we can continue this.Re exporting from PNG, yes this has all the hallmarks of somewhat of a 'closed shop' with some long established (read 'comfortable') relations in place. We (in the project) are working our way along this one carefully. We are helping growers to form co-operatives as the basis for progressing 'extension services' - which are pretty well now non-existent in our area at least - using a farmer-to-farmer basis. This has worked well in Madang with the cocoa growers there and we have high hopes for it in our patch. Another reason for helping growers to form co-ops is that they then become the base organistation which can apply (!) for an export licence from the Cocoa Board of PNG. So without counting our chickens this approach seems the way to go. We are working with the CoBPNG as a partner and feel we are at a stage where we talk the same language. So we will see very soon if this line of thinking 'works'. I can certainly let you know about what happens there.Re Markham Farms - just a bit of passing up-date, they did belong to the Swire group but have just been sold to a Malaysian firm. In the process they lost perhaps the best cocoa plantation manager around so it will be intersting to see how they go from here on. And they also sell beans to Michel Cluizel who then produce the "Maralumi" bar you mention. So that gives us some heart that small growers near by who produce the same quality of bean can come close to doing also. In saying this though I'm conscious of the great credibility gulf b/w Markham Farm and local small growers in the mind of buyers. But again here lies our challenge - to link up on an initial low volume 'trial' basis with buyers who buy quality beans and build the credibility from there. The trick of course will be actually getting to the 'trial' order.Re Quality: This is a very intriguing one for me as well. I gather in the final analysis the notion of what is and is not 'quality' is determined by the bean buyer. I've also heard here in Ecuador that a lot of store is put in the taste of the bean with some people (few) able to tell where a bean is from by the taste. I'm going to meet with some cocoa buyers in Germany soon and I'll be asking your same question: how do you determine the quality of a bean? So I can report on that too in 2 weeks.Re PNG cocoa and 'fine flavour' rating: Thanks for that reference. Very heartening to see PNG listed as 75% - the same as Ecuador. I'm intrigued to get the full story on the quality of the cocoa beans in PNG when I'm there soon. But for a few 'experts' there seems a dearth of knowledge on the quality front. Here in Ecuador they use the guillotine method in the field on harvesting to check for bean colour and disease and grading their crop, but that tool is unknown in PNG to my knowledge. But I'll check it out. When you mention 'EU' I gather you are referring to the aid agency whereas I think I was talkin about the European Union as a geographic market. But interesting though your point about the involvement of donor agencies in the cocoa industry in PNG and the less than astounding results. I'll be very interested to read those articles (and thanks). But the influx of 'helpful' agencies with varieties that might/do dilute the quality of the cocoa bean in favour of volume is silly in my view. If you have a quality product with limited supply with a level of demand from a market prepared to pay a premium they why would you ignore it and try to compete in the 'me too' market? My strong sense is this has been and still is PNG cocoa's dilemna - little unified agreement on the positioning of the industry internationally.Re image of PNG: Thanks for the further good news that 'scientists, chocolate connoisseurs, and ICCO are also well aware of PNG as a cocoa grower'. The info I've received recently here (2nd hand and always a danger) is that the buyers in Europe 'don't know' except Michel Cluizel of course! But I'm going to gather some info on that first hand soon too.Re the aid agency level of 'success' - I won't say anything about this other than the project I'm involved in is takin a private sector approach to building income in the District by taking a customer-driven approach to these industries. So that means seeing the cocoa/coffee/etc growers as customers on an equal plane to the Michel Cluizels of this world.In finishing Samantha I might just mention one of the biggest barriers we face is helping growers get access to finance - even microfinance. Banks in PNG and yes even micro-finance bodies see the growers as too much of a risk and impose overly stringent borrowing terms leaving the grower with literally no where to go despite a crop in the ground with an market value of $+++. So they are snookered and any buiding of their crops (e.g. even modest fermentries) is out of the question for the single grower - hence the co-op idea again. But this may (?) help explain why the Ausaid dryers exercise virtually failed. There is of course the not insignificant matter of whether the new dryers were the growers idea or 'imposed' (always a bad course).Pardon for making this reply so long Samantha but your thoughts and comments were so interesting they begged some wordy reply.

FAIR TRADE AND ORGANIC CERTIFICATION FROM THE EYES OF A PRODUCER

Posted in: Opinion

Hi Clay,Thank you very much for your help on that one. I've got two stats that might throw some light on the subject - one from Ecuador where I live at the moment and PNG where I work (don't ask about the flight time!!). I have it that Ecuador produced 130,000 tonnes this last year and I gather most of that is fine flavour and exported. PNG just topped the 51,000 tonne mark this year too and, while I'm guided by the IOCC rating, seems that most of that is fine flavour and also exported. So we have approx 150,000 tonnes there all up. I understand Dominican Republic is also in the fine flavour category but volume is small.So does this help us get closer to the volume and so the % that is fine flavour? Value your thoughts. And while not in the slightest an authority, like you, my money would be on the post-harvest/customer persepctive!Can I squeeze in another 'ask': I'm told by people here in Ecuador that either no one of the buying fratenity in the EU (at least) knows about PNG cocoa or they know of it but just can't access it (Duffy's dilemna comes to mind). Does any one share these views? Also while on the same topic, I've been staggered to not see PNG listed as a producer of cocoa let alone fine cocoa in almost all of the stats on world cocoa production. To top it off, I recently read an IOCC doc from the Executive Committee' of Sept 2006 on "A Study on the market for Organic Cocoa". It provides a table (Table 2) of world organic cocoa producers and under 'Asia and Oceania' as producing in total 762 tonnes of organic cocoa in 2006 - but it doesn't even list PNG who produces 51,000 tonnes (while not certified - our next challenge)!!! I 'm beginning to think it is a matter of 'nobody knowing' about PNG cocoa. To finish, I like the requirement of 3 years non-use of pesticides etc for organic certification. PNG cocoa growers haven't used it for several millennia!Very glad for your thoughts on the above questions.cheers.

FAIR TRADE AND ORGANIC CERTIFICATION FROM THE EYES OF A PRODUCER

Posted in: Opinion

Duffy, followig on from Langdon's comments and now yours it seems the cocao crop out of PNG is being sold to the firms in Singapore and Malaysia (over 57%) and then our suspicion is that it is on-sold to other local markets in S.E Asia. There is also a portion sold to Indonesian buyers who blend it with the commodity cocoa out of Indonesia. We have no hard evidence of this but a country who is producing 300,000 tonnes p.a buying more in from PNG who produes 51,000 tonnes does beg the question of 'why?' if not for blending - especially given the IOCC rating of fine flavour to PNG cocoa.So we are intent on trying to maximise the return to growers via the 'low volume/high return' route as you nicely put it and if this takes time (which it will) then so be it. That the bean-to-bar segment is very very small doesn't worry us unduly at the moment as production and quality issues are still needing to be worked through. What we think is at stake is the global positioning of the PNG cocoa industry - and that to the right segment (high end buyers) and a move away from the selling on a 'whoever wants it' basis. We are learning in any case so there is no huge hurry. We are also hoping that a few initial contracts with bean-to-bar buyers will represent some very important precedents to the growers who have been fleeced for too long now by exporters who have no interest in developing the industry and maintain a solid self-interest by keeping the growers in the dark on international prices and marketing approaches. So we intend to change all of that so that growers do become far more influencial in the value chain than they have been till now.Langdon, the project of building the cocoa industry is part of an NZAID project to improves incomes (by 10% at least by end of 2010) of rural folk in a district outside of Lae PNG. We are also building up the fish farming industry too with coffee to follow later this year. But it is the cocoa industry where we started because it has the greatest promise to raise incomes by a good measure.Can you perhaps confirm a stat I've heard - that the fine flavoured cocoa crop represents about 9% of the total world cocoa production. Sound about right? Be very happy to hear more and tell more about the project if you have any lead questions.

FAIR TRADE AND ORGANIC CERTIFICATION FROM THE EYES OF A PRODUCER

Posted in: Opinion

Langdon,I found your pricing approach very interesting re bringing greater value (= returns) back to the growers. I am involved in a project to build the cocoa industry in district of PNG and from my research so far - and I think you example bears this out - there are too many participants in the value chain between the grower and the retailers. I should add also that these participants are extracting value out of the chain for dubious 'services' with the net result that the full value/return back to growers is eroded.Our view is that we need to regain this 'extracted' value by dealing direct with the retailers - and even better when these retailers are also manufacturing on a bean-to-bar basis (such as Michel Cluizel) thereby shortneing the supply chain further. So we are actively pursuing this approach and hope that it makes sense to these end buyers as well by effectively shortening the supply/value chain.So while I see the merit in the thinking of returning some of the margin at the retailing end to growers, we believe that real power lies with the growers and we are workig to build their knowledge and skills re their understanding of the 'game' and how to play it.