Cocoa Farming Future Initiative Grenada

July 10, 2012

The past week has opened up my eyes to a number of different socio-economic issues facing cocoa farmers here. Yesterday, we all got to work up in the bush on Kim’s farm, which was a delightful, yet fatiguing experience. I feel as though it genuinely helped all of us to see what true cocoa farming is like in Grenada, a realization that is vital to have knowledge of in order to enact positive change for the locals. We comprehended that cocoa farmers really need help with labor and being able to pay employees to work their land.  This will not only help the farmer be able to increase their crop, allow for less waste to be created on the land, and keep some physical burden off of one person, but also put money back into the local economy. However, due increasing prices in minimum wage, small farmers cannot afford to employ these people. With this said, throwing money at farmers is also not the way to go about tackling this problem either. This can give us some issues to contemplate.

            In addition to working in the Bush, we have been surveying the farmers, which I feel has been going swimmingly. Owen and I got a good group of farmers the other day at a cocoa pick up point. Not only did we have rich, poor, small, big, farmers, but also some government officials as well. I’m excited to look over all the answers and see the overarching themes of these surveys.

            As for the wheel borrows, here in the next couple days we are starting the prototype for the first one. Unfortunately, it has become apparent that finding scrap on the island is exceeding difficult unless you want to pay lots of money. Providentially, Indian, a youthful Grenadian with a lot of connections on the island has offered to help with this barrier. I’m hopefully things will start turning up soon.

Cheers,

Sarah