Recently a friend who is an organic produce buyer for a US company, at my urging quoted prices for some organic cacoa products and a few other products from producers in the DR. The prices quoted were consistently higher than what she was quoted out of other Central American countries. I could not understand the prices at the time, but now I know why...
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=14596
There is some technical problem with the article in dominican today - parts of it is duplicated... So, a quote:
"Until very recently, almost all Dominican cocoa exports were controlled by a few wealthy families, who could count on buying cocoa from poor small scale farmers at low prices and without competition from other buyers. However, this began to change in the 1990's when farmers started to work with one another to create their own cocoa marketing enterprise.
That effort built CONACADO, a cooperative owned by 15,000 small scale Dominican farmers, and now the world's largest exporter of certified organic cocoa. For the traditionally dominant cocoa exporters, CONACADO's grass-roots success has meant more competition, less business, and lower profits, as CONACADO now exports 20% of the country's cocoa, often to high-end buyers who had traditionally shunned Dominican cocoa.
But instead of supporting this home-grown success that is bringing economic development and safe, sustainable agriculture to the nation's countryside, the government has agreed to a recommendation from CONACADO's competitors to impose a punitive tax on CONACADO members, and other small-scale cocoa producers."
The business practices here in the DR are truly strange.
http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=14596
There is some technical problem with the article in dominican today - parts of it is duplicated... So, a quote:
"Until very recently, almost all Dominican cocoa exports were controlled by a few wealthy families, who could count on buying cocoa from poor small scale farmers at low prices and without competition from other buyers. However, this began to change in the 1990's when farmers started to work with one another to create their own cocoa marketing enterprise.
That effort built CONACADO, a cooperative owned by 15,000 small scale Dominican farmers, and now the world's largest exporter of certified organic cocoa. For the traditionally dominant cocoa exporters, CONACADO's grass-roots success has meant more competition, less business, and lower profits, as CONACADO now exports 20% of the country's cocoa, often to high-end buyers who had traditionally shunned Dominican cocoa.
But instead of supporting this home-grown success that is bringing economic development and safe, sustainable agriculture to the nation's countryside, the government has agreed to a recommendation from CONACADO's competitors to impose a punitive tax on CONACADO members, and other small-scale cocoa producers."
The business practices here in the DR are truly strange.
