Food safety and the value of provenance are growing concerns for the cacao sector, as in other food industries. Consumers are getting increasingly interested in learning more about cacao and its products' traceability or the access to all information from production in the farm to public consumption. Besides food safety, other issues such as food fraud, employment of minors, and sustainability put more pressure on developing a traceability system.
To assess the supply chain of the cacao industry vis-a-vis developing the traceability system for the Philippine Cacao Industry in Southern Philippines, a project, “Supply Chain Management: Cacao Agro-Logistics in Southern Philippines Context,” was implemented in 2021. It was spearheaded by the Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST-PCAARRD) together with the University of Southeastern Philippines (USeP).
Findings of the project were tackled during the project’s terminal review held recently. Dr. Gilbert Importante, project staff, shared that the wet bean supply chain is more effective and efficient in performance compared to the supply chains of fermented and unfermented dried beans.
Other key findings of the project were: key players who keep records, consider the importance of record keeping, and who are willing to share the information that they have particularly those relating to the needed traceability components (critical tracking events and corresponding key data elements) and about 90% of the cacao farmers, were the small landholders and those who are tilling less than two hectares of land.
With these key findings and baseline data generated from this study, an offshoot project that will focus on piloting the cacao traceability system, is being developed. Considering all aspects of ensuring food safety, implementing a traceability system will improve cacao bean marketability and ensure the industry's long-term sustainability. It will also be used to put the imposed rules and regulations into practice.
The terminal review was organized by the monitoring unit of the Socio-Economics Research Division of DOST-PCAARRD. This review was participated by the USeP project team and representatives from PCAARRD units. Dr. Isabelita Pabuayon of the University of the Philippines Los Baños and Mr. Anton Palo, General Manager of Agri Foodlink, served as external evaluators.