By Atte Penttilä

In Belize, close to the village of Trio, there is a community-based cacao agroforestry concession that was established in 2015. This concession is a first of its kind in Belize and employs an interesting technique wherein the community has access to a protected area which they can use for the improvement of their livelihoods.

 
After a controlled burn the land will be planted with corn.

The path to the founding of the agroforestry concession was not a simple one and it was not without interactions of different levels of actors: local communities, Belize’s federal government, and the global political economy. In short, in early 2000s the Maya Mountain North Forest Reserve was being encroached upon by citrus and banana plantations. In addition to paid labor at the plantations, the workers needed additional means to support their families . As such, the people used the forest reserve for farming and resources gathering. Eventually in 2012, through multiple steps, the government of Belize evicted the people form the forest.

The people who were displaced took it upon themselves to contact the Belize Forest Department to gain legal access to the forest. It became a community effort and Ya’axché Conservation Trust was (and still is) a critical partner in the process. In 2015, Trio Farmers Cacao Growers Ltd. was established as a cooperative to support community agroforestry in the concession area. Their main goal was to support local livelihoods in Trio.

In June 2019, the Strong Coasts cohort from the University of South Florida visited the cacao agroforestry concession with guidance by Gustavo Requena from Ya’axché Conservation Trust. Gustavo is a farmer who uses different agroforestry and agroecological growing methods on his own farm in San Pedro Columbia. This is important because his work with Ya’axchéis remarkably similar to extension work by agricultural officers. Because he is a farmer and uses the methods he tells other people about, he has gained credibility with the cooperative farmers.

During our trip, Gustavo lead us off the main highway towards the village of Trio. “It is six miles, and then another six miles,” he says right before he drives off the gravel road. The road takes us through newly deforested tropical forests that are now barren, awaiting banana plantations. The plantations spread year by year, leveling more and more forest. It reminds me of what anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose explains in “Reports From a Wild Country” about settler colonialism and frontiers. The wild (in this case the forest) is awaiting transfiguration to become agricultural land. As our journey continued, the Jeep could hardly overcome the road which had turned into a watery, muddy trek that stretched along cattle pastures, burnt land, and tropical forest.

 
The encroaching banana plantations on land that used to be old growth forest.

Eventually, we made it to the end of the road, left our vehicles, and started a hike into the concession. We crossed the Trio Branch of Bladen River on a newly built bridge which was put in place for the cacao growers to have an easier access to the markets. The first part of the concession is reserved for annual plants. These are planted for farmers to have an immediate source of income for their families as they wait for the cacao which will not produce right away. Gustavo explains the importance of planning for the short-term, middle-term, and long-term as farmers need year-round provisions for their families. A farming system that relies on monocrops does not have this type of imbedded resilience planned and is more vulnerable to stresses.

 
You have to cross a newly built bridge to cross the Trio Branch of River Bladen to reach the agroforestry concession.

Finally, we reach our destination, the cacao agroforestry lands. Gustavo shows how cacao is grown and what is needed to keep the plants healthy. He elaborates on what farmers should do in order to promote higher yields while maintaining biodiversity. It becomes clear that shade is an important part of the cacao systems. The farmers control shade by trimming and pruning of the cacao and the surrounding trees. There is a trade-off between the shade, cacao yields, and biodiversity. With greater amounts of shade there is more biodiversity, but less shade yields more cacao. Ya’axche recommends that the farmers optimize the amount of shade so that production of cacao is plentiful. By the looks of the nearby markets, it seems that there is plenty of shade and that cacao is being produced in abundance.

As we make our way through the stands in the heat and humidity, Gustavo cannot help himself but to remove suckers from the cacao trees left and right. “These need to be removed in the next week or two, otherwise the farmer will be in trouble as the suckers will become branches and less cacao will be produced.”

 
Gustavo Requena from Ya’axché Conservation Trust showing the best way of trimming and pruning a cacao plant. You should leave four branches for optimal yields.

This particular area in the concession for growing cacao was chosen because it was a place where local cacao was already growing. This finding shows that the soil in the area is suitable for cacao, so sophisticated analyses of soil samples are not needed to figure that out. The taste of the local cacao is slightly different and presumably the markets are better for the imported variety. If you pick a cacao pod from the tree, open it, and pop a seed in your mouth it does not taste like chocolate, but more like a sweet fruit. Then if you bite on it the taste turns bitter, like dark chocolate. Better not to chew, but to just cherish the fruitiness covering the seed. In order to reach the chocolatey flavor, the seeds need to be fermented and roasted. They say that chewing on cacao beans can give you energy and relieve hunger. I had quite a few beans one day, and subsequently forgot to eat dinner. I guess it did something but wouldn’t recommend it for that purpose.

About the Author. Atte Penttilä is pursuing a PhD in Applied Anthropology at the University of South Florida in Tampa. He has a BSc in environmental engineering from Tampere Polytechnic, University of Applied Sciences and an MSc in agroecology from University of Helsinki. His multidisciplinary and international background brings together different aspects of the food-energy-water nexus. In his Master’s thesis, Atte studied the effect of dung beetles on greenhouse gas emissions from cow dung. The results were published in PLOS One and featured in several news outlets and magazines, including National Geographic. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies, Atte worked in the field of development in Ethiopia, Vietnam, and Finland. His work focused on agroforestry with regards to local farmers’ associations. Atte is interested in how food production relates to local livelihoods, sustainability, and climate change.

STRONG COASTS is supported by a National Science Foundation Collaborative Research Traineeship (NRT) award (#1735320) led by the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI) to develop a community-engaged training and research program in systems thinking to better manage complex and interconnected food, energy, and water systems in coastal locations. The views expressed here do not reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.