Cocoa, cooperatives and conservation: The power of forest-friendly chocolate

For nearly a decade, the RSPB and our partners have been supporting farmers around the Gola forests of Sierra Leone and Liberia to produce forest-friendly cocoa. In celebration of this year’s World Chocolate Day, we are venturing beneath the forest canopy to meet the people and the plants at the heart of this work to support local livelihoods and protect a critically important ecosystem through the power of chocolate. Nick Williams, Flyway Conservation Outreach Officer at the RSPB, peels back the wrapper on a story of cocoa and cooperation. 

“Yes, I like the forest” says Ansu Kamara with a wide smile as he stands in the dappled shade of his cocoa farm, a collection of bright green pods dangling from a nearby tree.

“The relationship between the forest and the cocoa is very important,” he assures me. Ansu goes on to explain that farmers like himself, growing cocoa close to the forest and with large, shade-giving trees on their farms, can harvest cocoa for much longer each season than those operating further from the forest who often use a monoculture approach instead. 

Ansu is from the village of Lalehun, in Gaura chiefdom, which is one of the 122 forest-edge communities that dot the 4km-wide buffer zone surrounding the Gola Rainforest National Park in eastern Sierra Leone. It is farmers like him that the RSPB, through our partners at Gola Rainforest Conservation and Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia, support to produce high-quality cocoa beans across the Greater Gola Landscape. These beans are fermented and dried locally before either being sold to national buyers or exported internationally to be turned into delicious chocolate bars and other treats, more on that later! 

The key ingredient in this recipe is shade.  As a shade-tolerant crop, cocoa can grow alongside other taller forest trees in an agroforestry system rather than requiring clear-cutting of the forest for its cultivation. It can therefore offer a key source of income for people living in forested areas. This in turn can help protect the forest as there is less dependence on its timber and other resources for local communities needing to make a living.

These cocoa farms are also important areas for wildlife themselves with research showing that 140 bird species use this habitat, including globally threatened species like the Yellow-casqued Hornbill which depend on large trees and so could not survive in monoculture cocoa farms. 

If you travel north-east from Ansu’s farm in Sierra Leone, through the dense forests of Gola’s national parks, with their internationally important wealth of biodiversity including endangered species like Pygmy Hippo, Chimpanzee, and African Forest Elephant as well as over 300 species of birds, then you will reach Lofa County, Liberia.

It is here that the Society for the Conservation of Nature of Liberia, in collaboration with the RSPB and thanks to the support of the Ecological Restoration Fund, have been helping smallholder farmers to develop their forest-friendly cocoa farming by providing training and improved infrastructure.

As part of this work, a revolving fund has also been set up to purchase cocoa beans from the farmers of two cooperatives, Sebehill and Guma Mende, which are then sold for processing and the profits from these sales used to buy more beans in the future. This financial model, together with the purchase of solar dryers and other equipment, is helping to improve the efficiency of the cocoa production but there is one crucial stage in the process that is also being improved: fermentation. Training at the cooperatives’ centralised fermentation warehouses is helping to produce higher quality, tastier beans which in turn demand a higher market price and so improves income for the farmers themselves. 

Meanwhile, back in Sierra Leone, an exciting new project is getting underway to pilot new agroforestry approaches designed to combine cocoa and forest trees with other tree crops (including fruits and medicine). The goal here is to create additional sustainable income streams and so find the ‘sweet spot’ that blends improved livelihoods with protecting forests. This work, made possible thanks to the support of Jersey Overseas Aid, will place particular importance on empowering women and vulnerable members of communities to develop and control new complementary sources of income in cocoa agroforests.

While cocoa continues to provide vital support for Gola’s forest-edge communities, this can still leave farmers’ livelihoods susceptible to fluctuating market prices. Once successfully scaled up, this project has the potential to support 3,000 cocoa farmers and their families in generating more secure and sustainable income.

Our partnerships on forest-friendly cocoa in Sierra Leone have already supported over 2,500 farmers and resulted in the export of over 130 tonnes of beans to international markets and this new project is looking to strengthen that work even further.  

By working closely together with partners, communities and individuals to support sustainable cocoa production, local livelihoods can be improved and the forests of the Greater Gola Landscape, together with their wealth of biodiversity, can be better protected.  

You can also support this important work just by eating delicious Gola chocolate! Our forest-friendly Gola Rainforest chocolate bars and other tasty treats are available to buy from RSPB shops, catalogues and online with all the profits going back into our sustainable cocoa work.

Recently the RSPB bought a further 1.5 tonnes of Gola cocoa beans which will be heading to craft chocolate makers to be turned into a new batch of our milk and dark chocolate bars as well as other exciting new products coming soon.

So to celebrate World Chocolate Day this year why not help to support people, conserve wildlife and protect forests by choosing from our Gola chocolate including bars, drinking chocolate, and truffles – enjoy!