A STUDY comparing different cacao production systems in Bolivia, South America, has concluded that agroforestry systems and organic management may be more profitable than monocultures and conventional management.

The demand for cacao has increased worldwide, and to meet that, the organic cultivated area has been expanded almost six-fold since 2004, considerably more than the total cocoa area. Currently, more than 300,000 hectares of organic cacao are grown worldwide, over 60% of it in Latin America.

But in the process, traditional agroforestry systems have been replaced by monocultures, causing a drastic loss of biodiversity. But little was known about the economic differences between the different production systems, until the newly-released report from the Research Institute of Organic Agriculture.

The study assessed the productivity and return on labour, in terms of income per working day, of four different cacao production systems in a long-term trial during the first five years after the plantation establishment. Full-sun monocultures, where only cacao trees are grown, and agroforestry systems, where cacao trees are intercropped with shade trees and other by-crops such as bananas or plantains, were compared under both organic and conventional management.

The return on labour across the years was roughly twice as high in the agroforestry systems compared to the monocultures, even though agroforestry systems were more labour-intensive than monocultures due to the time required to manage the shade trees and even though the yields of cacao were about 40 % higher in the monocultures. This was due to the revenues derived from the sales of banana and plantains which economically compensate the lower cacao yields. In addition, these agroforestry systems contribute to food security and local nutrition.