Improving traceability and transparency along the cacao value chain

Haiti’s cacao industry has traditionally sold most of its harvest to low-value commodity markets. To differentiate its cacao and access higher value markets, PISA invested in quality and certifications.

When PISA obtained its first organic certification in 2015, its team realised that ensuring the requisite traceability along the cacao value chain to maintain this certification would be real challenge! It would require a considerable paper trail given that PISA is buying cacao directly from more than 1,200 smallholder farmers in the North, each farming on plots smaller than one hectare. In addition, each of these plots must be inspected every year for certification renewal purposes. PISA built its business model on transparency with its clients who, for the most part, publish and verify producer information, farm gate prices and premium distributions at least once a year.

Papyrus S.A., currently implementing this PISA Cacao and Vanilla project and having already developed a mobile value chain application to support farmer and crop management, monitoring, and reporting—first for sorghum and then for maize and beans—adapted this powerful tool to the cacao value chain. This application adaptation, named PISAMobil, now allows PISA to collect key information from the field in near real time, respond quickly to events in the field, and process regional and producer-specific buying information more quickly. This will reduce discrepancies in the distribution of premiums and support PISA in collecting certification data more efficiently and reliably for its annual renewal process.

PISA and Papyrus will launch PISAMobil in Acul du Nord and Limbé-Bas Limbé as they are closest to the PISA processing facilities and are home to half of the participating producers. A total of 35 users were trained for this launch, including internal controllers, buying centers and PISA’s field and production team.

“It will be easier to identify plots and producers requesting follow up. The process will be much quicker, and we will be using a lot less paper said Herminie St Preux, trained Internal Controller from Acul du Nord. I am also a producer, and I can already foresee that our organic premium could be distributed earlier as PISAMobil will immediately register all cacao sales to PISA.”

PISA plans to use this application on several additional value chains with vanilla and coffee next in line.

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