Page 23 - IB March 2021

Agriculture Agriculture

TREE TO BAR TO TABLE

SAVUSAVU’S KOKOMANA

By Samisoni Pareti and Samantha Magick

Kokomana is a small artisan ‘tree-to-bar’ chocolate maker
and social enterprise run by Richard and Anne Markham in
Savusavu, northern Fiji.
The operation produces about 100 bars of high-quality
chocolate bars—almost entirely by hand—each week, using
cocoa beans from communities, particularly around Natewa
Bay (including from Ana and Manoa Raika of Naweni, who have
been awarded at Paris’ Salon Du Chocolat). Kokomana also
runs tours of its operations and grows its own beans.
The Markhams and their team are taking an agroforestry
approach to their crop.
“We’re very concerned about the impact of agricultural
production especially cash crops on the environment,” Richard
says. “It’s a fragile environment here, and every time there’s
a boom in production of, whether it’s dalo or ginger or vanilla
or kava, communities tend to go out and find nice old growth
forests with fertile soil and cut it down, and you get one cycle
of production and then the topsoil is washed away, it pollutes
the reef and so on.”
“You can’t grow rice or sugar in an agroforestry system but
many of these high value crops, cocoa, coffee, vanilla, even
kava itself, grow really (well) in this kind of agroforestry
system. It reduces dependence on one commodity, if every-
body grows kava, then the price collapses, if everybody grows
vanilla, the price at the moment is pretty buoyant but it will Photo: Justin J. Naisua
collapse as well, you know, we say that the price of vanilla at
the moment is between F$4,000 (US$1957) a kilo but it will
collapse. Once Madagascar comes back into production, it will believes there needs to be greater focus on market chains “to
collapse back down to F$50 (US$24) a kilo. So, what this does take the thing from farm gate to processes, manufacturers
from a business point of view, you grow different things, you and the market,” rather than just on the production side.
have a bit of a safety net.” “It says in our business plan, sustainable livelihood for our
“When we’re managing the farm, there’s an awful lot of employees, and a good income for our suppliers. You know,
emphasis on conservation of soil fertility, recycling nutrients we try to pay a good, fair price. One of the reasons that cocoa
into the soil,” Richard says. hasn’t really taken off industrially here is that, for the com-
Kokomana also offers farm tours tailored to the interests of modity export market, they’ve been paying about the same
visitors; so while they will include demonstrations of choco- price for more than 10 years, they’ve been paying about US$
late processing, they can also include trees, birds, butterflies 2,000 a ton for about 10 years, and you think how other costs
and insects. are gone up in 10 years.
Visits have dropped dramatically since borders closed, and “So, what we’re saying is, we already pay more than twice
Kokomana has responded by reducing prices and adjusting that farm gate price, you know, and we can afford to do that
their product for locals. because we’re making a high-value product, and we have
“It’s quite interesting that, now that we’re getting more what you call a short market chain. But what we hope is that
domestic tourism, how many people come to us and say ‘oh if producers here in northern division learn how to produce
yeah, when I was a kid, my grandfather grew cocoa or my really high-quality beans suitable for making handmade
father grew cocoa, I used to work on the farm, split the pots chocolate. Then, we can link them up with— still small-scale
and things’ but for them, you know, it’s the first time they’ve but bigger than us— in Australia and New Zealand, even in San
seen the rest of the process, how it goes through, how it Francisco, there’s growing interest. Vanuatu is already doing
makes chocolate and people are pretty excited about that,” it.”
Richard says.
Richard previously worked as a production agronomist and editor@islandsbusiness.com

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