The town of Tingo María is situated in the province of Leoncio Prado. This province (in the Huánuco region), after a period of great turmoil linked to drug trafficking in the 1970s and 1980s, experienced in the 1990s the development of the cocoa industry which reproduced the agronomic errors of traffickers whose illegal crops were produced in intensive monoculture.
Besides intensive cocoa production depleted geologically ancient soils, which caused a high accumulation of cadmium, a carcinogenic heavy metal, in the beans.
The town of Tingo María is located in the foothills of the Andes Mountains at the entrance to the Amazon basin therefore its tropical climate is suitable for growing cocoa. However, the increasingly marked climate change at the local level is resulting in longer and longer summers where cocoa suffers from water stress and excessive sunshine. In winter, rains and floods clog the soil and increase the risk of disease.
Carried out on the outskirts of Eastern Amazon, the Agroforestry Cocoa project aims at enhancing the transition of around 100 cocoa producers from the Huanúco province, from a monoculture approach to the development of varied agroforestry systems adapted to each plot. Thus, the project aims at improving the quality of production and its sustainability through planting a variety of native forest and fruit trees, a comprehensive training programme and adapted awareness raising activities.
Such activities will be pursued within the Con Bosque project, Envol Vert keep on working with its local partners in order to foster the development of economic alternatives, such as the native bees’ honey (mélipones) or the forest seeds network.
