Côte d'Ivoire - FarmStrong Commodities SA

This Plan Vivo-certified project run by FarmStrong in Côte d'Ivoire supports cocoa farmers in Soubre and Abengourou to become more resilient by transitioning from cultivated land to agroforestry. These recently adopted agroforestry systems will offer farmers and their families food security and income diversification, while safeguarding biodiversity, mitigating climate change, and indirectly reducing deforestation.

• Project ADD summary PDF (version July 2022)

FarmStrong Commodities SA is a non-governmental organization established in 2016. Although the organization is still young, the founders and employees have broad experience with projects promoting resilient, structured, rural, economic development, through integrated agricultural production systems. All while contributing to securing basic human needs and fundamental human rights and protecting the environment.

From the start of their project, until they connected with Acorn, FarmStrong had the intention to scale up their agroforestry project by offering farmers carbon finance for the trees they planted. As per FarmStrong’s agroforestry design, the first shade and fruit trees were planted by leading farmers in 2018.

The project is taking place in a region with a recent UNDP Human Development Indicator of 0.538. Cocoa yields of the participant farmers tend to be relatively low compared to the theoretical potential. Consequently, Côte d'Ivoire farmers live below the poverty line and experience losses in their already minimal productivity and income due to the increasing effects of climate change. Even though most smallholder farmers are aware of looming climate change and weather pattern changes that threaten their crops and productivity, without project intervention and the resulting carbon finance, there is no incentive whatsoever in the project area to develop agroforestry.

As the area features a great many eligible farmers and a vast amount of eligible farmland, the project is only at the start of the durable impact it will be able to make on the environment and its participants.

Full project documentation available upon request.