The cocoa The Peruvian market has enormous potential to deepen its position in the markets based on quality attributes, diversity of origin and sustainability.
Peru is internationally recognized as an exporter of cocoa quality and differentiation attributes at origin. However, at the same time Peru is part of the top 10 countries that lose the most tropical rainforests (WRI, 2019), mainly due to land use change for commodity production.
The cocoa The Peruvian market has enormous potential to deepen its position in the markets based on quality attributes, diversity of origin and sustainability. Taking advantage of this potential requires changes at the productive level, collective action by stakeholders, as well as the effective implementation of solutions to resolve the low productivity in the countryside. In other words, a productive change that makes production capital- and technology-intensive, replacing the forest as it is today.
It is in this perspective that the Coalition for Sustainable Production is designing the Cocoa, Forests and Diversity initiative, which, under the form of a sectoral agreement, seeks to catalyze resources and collaboration among members for the implementation of concrete actions such as a platform for the agglomeration of financial and non-financial services and productive alliances between companies, producers and government.
The advances in the design of this initiative were presented on Wednesday, September 30, at the forum Cocoa, Forests and Diversity: Towards a Commitment to the Differentiation and Sustainability of Cocoa, Forests and Diversity: Towards a Commitment to the Differentiation and Sustainability of Cocoa. cocoa Peruvian chocolate. In it, actors such as the Alianza Cacao Perú/USAID, Collpa de Loros, Asociación de Promoción del Chocolate Peruano (APROCHOC), Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation (MINAGRI) exchanged perspectives on this proposal.
"We want to move to the positioning before international markets as a deforestation-free cocoa that has a positive impact on producers." explained Javier Ortiz, representative of the Tropical Forest Alliance, who also emphasized the need for an alliance with the private sector to address challenges such as access to productive factors; the need for efficiency in land use; cross-sectoral policies and country strategies, as well as monitoring and traceability processes.
On the opportunities for the production of a cocoa sustainableJosé Yturrios, representative of Alianza Cacao Perú, maintains that the business model of the cocoa Peruvian production must be based on two pillars: productivity and differentiation.
"In Latin America, the cost of producing cocoa is higher than in Africa, the largest cocoa supplier in the world," explains Yturrios. "The only way to sustain labor in Peru has to do with increasing productivity."
The specialist also indicated that sustainable jurisdictions must be highly productive if we do not want to put pressure on forests, and that we cannot continue to grow on the basis of increasing areas.
"A differentiated (sustainable) cocoa is going to allow us to get out of these ups and downs of the stock market." Finally, Yturrios emphasized that Peru has all the conditions, however, we have to work hard to differentiate ourselves from the demand side, since today's buyers around the world are increasingly interested in purchasing a cocoa sustainable.
Cocoa and Chocolate Show: The Cocoa and Chocolate Show is a trade fair for the cocoa and chocolate sector. cocoa which has been organized since 2010 thanks to the organizations of producers, manufacturers, entrepreneurs and exporters of cocoa and derivatives. Its objective is to promote the exportable supply of the cocoa Peruvian market and position it in the national and international markets.
