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Cameroon: ICCO Prescribes Best Practices in Cocoa Production
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Cameroon Tribune (Yaoundé)
24 July 2008
Posted to the web 24 July 2008
Lukong Pius Nyuylime
Actors in the cocoa sector have been provided with best known practices in cocoa production. The practices are contained in a manual published at the end of the sixteenth meeting of the Consultative Board on the World Cocoa Economy which took place in Berlin last May. Three reasons have been advanced for the production of the best practices: quest for high quality standards, need to meet food safety legislative standards and achieving sustainable cocoa production.
According to the manual, cocoa of merchant quality must be: fermented, thoroughly dry, free from smoky beans, free from abnormal or foreign odours and free from any evidence of adulteration. Good quality cocoa must be uniform in size, reasonably free from broken beans, fragments and pieces of shell, and be virtually free from foreign matter. Quality, as defined by the manual, include not just the all-important aspects of flavour and purity, but also the physical characteristics that have a direct bearing on manufacturing performance, especially yield of the cocoa nib (Biscuit, Cake, Chocolate and Confectionery Alliance (BCCCA). "The different aspects or specifications of quality in cocoa include: flavour, purity or wholesomeness, consistency, yield of edible material and cocoa butter characteristics", the manual said.
The manual states inter alia that cocoa farmers have little or no influence over the cultural factors of cocoa growing, as parameters such as chemical characteristics of the soil available to them, the genetic make-up of the planting material used and the climatic environment are imposed on them by nature and science. "While the farmer may exercise some latitude in choosing his planting material, this choice is naturally constrained by the diversity and characteristics of the cocoa varieties available to him from research and extension services", the manual said.
The ICCO manual further streamlines the various stages on which best practices should be focussed. These include: establishment of the cocoa farm, , cocoa farm maintenance and crop husbandry, cocoa crop protection, cocoa harvest, post harvest, on-farm processing and storage, pod breaking, fermentation, drying, packaging and storage, transportation and shipping practices among others.
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