Our Producer Partners

Dominican Republic

In the 1980s the cocoa industry in the Dominican Republic (DR) was dominated by just four families. Farmers were very poorly organized and poorly paid and the quality of cocoa was low. Frequently, the income received from the export of their cocoa was below the costs of production. CONACADO (Confederación Nacional de Cacaocultores Dominicanos) was founded as a co-operative farmer response to low global cocoa prices and to improve the quality of cocoa produced in the DR.

CONACADO Cocoa Co-operative, Dominican Republic
The Cocoa Revolution

Following years of hard work and a determination to transition into the organic and Fair Trade systems, today CONACADO is the world’s largest producer of Fair Trade organic cocoa and one of the largest cocoa exporters in the DR, exporting 25% of the country’s cocoa. It is comprised of 9,000 small-scale farmers organized into 9 regional "bloque" associations, each consisting of 126 village associations. It is estimated that CONACADO’s total Fair Trade premiums will be USD 1 million in 2006.

Cocoa is the main cash crop for CONACADO farmers, accounting for 90% of the farmer's income. CONACADO cocoa is produced using organic agricultural techniques under the shade grown canopy of other fruit-producing trees that provide extra income and food security for the farmers. Premiums from Fair Trade sales have helped to improve production and the quality of cocoa, and have assisted communities in investing in much needed community water systems, health clinics and educational scholarships.

Visit CONACADO’s website (www.conacado.com.do) to learn more about them.

What CONACADO says about Fair Trade:
"These days, the competition for small-scale farmers' organizations has become very aggressive, so only niche markets allow us to survive. The Fair Trade market is a very important market for our associates to survive. We would like to see the Fair Trade sales increase to improve our market position." - Isidoro de la Rosa, Executive Director CONACADO - FLO Producer Profile, May 2000.

Meet some of the CONACADO producers

Biographies courtesy of the Fairtrade Foundation (www.fairtrade.org.uk)

Ovidia
Ovidia gets up at 5 am and makes breakfast for her husband, Ovispo, and five grandchildren. She looks after the children as their mother, her daughter, is working away from home and can’t take care of them. They have breakfast at 7 am after which Ovispo goes to work in the cocoa farm half an hour's walk away. At midday Ovidia joins her husband at the farm bringing a picnic lunch for the two of them. Afterwards they work together weeding, pruning and sowing new trees. They harvest about twice a month.

Ovidia and Ovispo sell all of their cocoa to their farmers' association, a member of the CONACADO farmer's co-operative. Less than half reaches the Fair Trade market, since there is still insufficient consumer demand. For this part of their crop, the farmers receive a guaranteed minimum price. The remaining cocoa is sold to the conventional market where prices have been very low (below the cost of production) for over two years. They have been earning an average of approximately 2,500 pesos a month, which just about covers their costs and living expenses.

The Fair Trade price has sustained them during long periods of low market prices. Sales to the Fair Trade market have enabled CONACADO to set up a nursery, which supplies low-cost plants to the farmers so that they can grow most of their own food.

Manuel
Manuel's day starts at six o’clock. For breakfast he has some bananas and possibly a cup of hot chocolate. Two hours later he is at work, clearing weeds and tending the cocoa plants and the surrounding shade-giving fruit trees. Maria prepares his lunch ‘because she loves me’, Manuel says, with a twinkle in his eye. The part of his job he likes best is sowing the cocoa, because the new plants are his security for the future. Manuel and Maria have six children, three of whom have emigrated. One works with Manuel on the farm.

Manuel missed out on school because his father was very poor, so he had to work in the fields from a young age. He inherited his land from his wife’s family. Like many other local farmers, Manuel starting growing cocoa in the 1950s because it offered a more prosperous future. He now belongs to a group of 42 farmers who are part of the CONACADO. Among the benefits of belonging to his group, Manuel singles out the interest-free loans farmers can get to tide them over until harvest time. CONACADO also helps hard-up farmers with fertilizer and new young cocoa plants.

Olga
Olga Lidia de Jesús is 12 years old and goes to school every day in La Taranas in the Dominican Republic. All the farmers in her village of Yanabo are cocoa farmers and many belong to CONACADO. Olga’s father is a cocoa farmer. According to her, life in her family has improved because Fair Trade companies pay her father more money for his cocoa.

His co-op can now afford to teach people new farming skills. They even organized a project to bring electricity to the community. Olga’s father says that he would never sell his cocoa to the big companies because they “never do anything for the community like the Fair Trade companies do”.

Guillermo
It’s a two hour uphill walk from Guillermo's house to his small plot of land, and he arrives streaming in sweat. He’ll spend the day with a machete in hand, weeding or pruning the plants. A couple of days a week, he works at the headquarters of his farmers’ association, where the beans are fermented and dried.

Guillermo is near the end of a two-year term as president of his local farmer’s association. He’s therefore seen the benefits that Fair Trade has brought to the community. Where he lives, medical workers have been providing free advice and medicines. A nursery, funded by the Fair Trade premium, is providing the farmers with fruit trees at low cost. These trees shade the cocoa plants, and give the farmers an alternative source of nutrition and income. Aqueducts and pathways across ditches make it easier to work in fields which are often far from roads.

His message to Fair Trade shoppers is simple. “We promise to provide you with a good quality of fruit, so long as you promise to keep buying more!’