Encouraging a profitable and sustainable Indonesian Cocoa Industry

Cocoa is the main source of income and livelihood for over 500.000 smallholders' farmers with their families and contributes foreign exchange earnings of 700 million dollar/year of export value. Despite these facts, the quality and productivity at the cocoa farm is in decline due primarily to pest and disease pressure, aging tree stock and declining soil fertility. The economic status of most smallholders' farmers is below the prosperity level that could be achieved.

Many cocoa stakeholders in Indonesia expressed a willingness to collaborate and work together to lead the Indonesian cocoa industry in the right direction by improving cocoa quality, productivity and most of all the prosperity level of smallholder farmers. These stakeholders realized that no one stakeholder working alone can solve all the issues and it is this realization that has led to the formation of a forum, called "Cocoa Sustainability Partnership" (Forum Koordinasi Pengembangan Kakao, red. in Indonesian).

The forum's purpose is to provide a vehicle for knowledge sharing and updating on the progress of partners projects; The forum assists in facilitating the collaboration between many stakeholders. The establishment of this website is seen as a useful tool to facilitate the knowledge sharing. The following pages explain how partners collaborate within the forum and provide updates of specific project performance of each operational committee. Increasingly the projects on the ground are highlighting issues that are then made known to national policy makers.

We trust that this website is able to provide comprehensive information both for CSP partners and other cocoa stakeholders which are concerned with the development of the Indonesian cocoa industry and we welcome the feedback that you as a user of the website may provide.