4 minute video about the tool:
https://youtu.be/o2LoiYcefdw
What would you say about a new cocoa pod break tool which:
- breaks the pod and separates beans from unwanted placenta in one intuitive and fluid motion.
- preconditions beans for proper fermentation - if you are a chocolate company you are assured that no off-taste placentas took part in making your product.
- by default, totally eliminates one type of manual work from cocoa chain - does it automatically not reduce the child labour and is this not our shared objective?
Many of you have watched Hans Rosling’s TED talk about how adoption of washing machine technology solved hygienic (clean clothes), environmental (river pollution and wood for fire), gender (more freedom for women), educational (mothers now can spend more time to help kids better prepare home-works for school) problems. If in 1950s, there were as many NGOs as now, the fact that millions of women in Europe had to go to riverside, collect wood, set fire and spend half a day to manually wash clothes, would have been considered as a persistent social problem. There would have been documentaries, conferences, awareness campaigns and commitments and pledges to “eradicate it” by 1950, then 1955, 1960 and so on and so on. However, without technology, this problem would have never been solved.
The similarity between child labour, generally hard and long manual labour in cocoa and washing clothes by the river is that awareness campaigns and trainings have long reached maximum of their potential and as we can see it is impossible to see 2020 or even 2025 targets being fulfilled if there is no systemic approach with concept and plan to find, test and adopt labour saving (any kind of labour, be it child or adult), tools and processes.
I have worked in cocoa sector since 2013, starting with quantitative survey of 90 cocoa farmers to build the insights into existing problems and opportunities. Analyses of collected data and the needs of confectionery brands prompted me to choose affordable, sustainability oriented innovations and implementation models as my next focus area. I wanted to find real tools and simpler process flows which would be affordable to cocoa farmers. I would like to share, after initiating and organizing several field trials, how the process of finding new cocoa farm technologies looks like for those who tried it.
Setting Objective/Idea: reduce NN of and duration of manually done works in cocoa post-harvest while lowering the cost and difficultly of the process (farmer’s need) and resulting in better and uniform quality of fermentation (industry’s need).
How: Look at how pod collection, pod breaking, bean-placenta separation, draining, fermentation and drying are done now. Then think:
- which two tools could be merged into one tool or one process instead of two tools or two processes?
- can one tool break the pod and the same tool separate beans from placenta?
Who will invent it?
Technology partners: it may seem unlikely but one would be surprised by how many top quality partners can actually be found. For example Stanford University runs the program called Extreme Affordability. What do they do? They look for affordable solutions for the poorest from light to medical equipment to hazelnut de-husker. Cocoa pod breaker Pelle Bongo's first prototype was invented not at some agricultural university but at high tech Stanford campus. The video above is a documentary about first trials of this tool among cocoa farmers. You may notice how happy farmers feel: they see the tool as something from future, from future of cocoa farming.
What is situation now?
Big and smaller confectionery brands have the interest and the need to transform farming but focus has been on training and technical advice on existing practices. for example, training on how to safely handle machete, how not to take kids to pod breaking work, how to separate beans from placenta during a separate stage of work, how to turn beans 2 times during fermentation etc. If farmers really follow these rules, they will need even more labour and these training would unintentionally contribute to higher demand for manpower and higher levels of child labour too.
Instead it is better to give farmers affordable yet innovative tools which will do the job in shorter time and by default reduce system's need for more manual labour.
Instead it is better to give farmers affordable yet innovative tools which will do the job in shorter time and by default reduce system's need for more manual labour.
