Farmers reaping their harvest

By DOROTHY MARK
THE catch phrase, ‘look after cocoa and cocoa will look after you’ became a reality for 1900 cocoa farmers in the Transgogol area of Madang at the end of January when cocoa exporting company Outspan PNG Limited paid them dividends.
It was payday for the local families when the Madang-based company divided K117,000 among the hardworking farmers who supply cocoa to the company for export.
Outspan has been supporting local cocoa farmers under the Rainforest Alliance certification programme which stresses on biodiversity conservation to not only improve the livelihoods and wellbeing of farmers and their communities but encourage natural resource conservation as well.
The whole of last year farmers were supplying Outspan PNG LTd in different quantities according to the number of trees in their plots.
Payments from the company were according to the number of tonnes of cocoa they supplied from the 147 fermentries they owned.
“I want our farmers to go from strength to strength and produce good quality cocoa,” Outspan’s operations manager in Madang, Basavaraj Mashetty said.
Cocoa Board’s regional manager Wesley Kilang thanked Outspan for its good work and continued support to PNG farmers in the cocoa industry.
Kilang said Outspan was adding a lot of value in all the regions through certification and PPAP programmes.
He was happy that farmers were getting good incentives through such programmes adding that the timely payment of incentives would ease the burden of school project fees for families.
Outspan has also appreciated three major farmers from Transgogol who supplied more than 10 tonnes in 2016 through the programme.
The Rainforest Alliance certification programme was one of the commitments of Outspan PNG Ltd under its cocoa sustainable programme in a bid to encourage and support cocoa farmers in the province.
The group passed an external audit in March last year and certified which is good news for farmers in Madang who attended a Rainforest Alliance meeting in Madang last Friday.
According to Mashetty the Rainforest Alliance programme was based on the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) standard which farmers were encouraged to comply with.
He said in the course of compliance, a best management and agricultural practice was adopted by farmers along the cocoa supply chain.
“Group members and their member farmers comply with the environmental, social, labour and agronomic contents of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN),” Mashetty said.
“The programme was focused on efficient agriculture of more than 30 crops, including cocoa, biodiversity conservation and sustainable community development,” he said.
Outspan initially started the programme in 2013 in Transgogol area, covering villagers from Barum, Sehan, Yall, Jobtou, Bemal, Baisarik, Tebesarik and Koromasarik.
The first certification audit was conducted for Transgogol and 600 farms/farmers were certified in 2015. In March last year, the first annual audit was done by two external auditors for farmers in the area.
During that time, three new additional areas were included -Marik and Mawan areas in Madang district and Usino in the Usino-Bundi District – with certification audits also conducted in those areas.
Farmers were encouraged to work hard and be honest and comply with the Rainforest Alliance standards.
“Premium is meant to be for the hard work in complying with Rainforest Alliance principles; it would be biased to pay premium to a farmer who does not follow principles of the alliance in its cocoa farming activities,” Mashetty said.