For almost 30 years, the cooperative Norandino has been a helping hand for thousands of farmers in Peru. Thanks to the cooperative, their harvest and product quality are increasing and they have access to loans, markets and agricultural expertise.

And now, Norandino has come to the rescue of the hard-hit cocoa farmers once again. Through a pilot project, the cooperative supports 160 smallholder farmers in the transition from cocoa to sugarcane; a crop that is easy to sell and earns higher incomes than cocoa.

This is how Norandino helps the smallholder farmers:

long-term loans to replace cocoa trees with sugarcane. At the end of the project a total of 120 hectares of sugarcane will have been planted.
technical assistance for all 160 farmers in making this difficult switch from one crop to another.
training and sharing knowledge on how to grow sugarcane sustainably and process it to panela (unrefined whole cane sugar).
financing and assembly of three large installations for processing sugarcane. These serve as examples for other regions to copy, with financing and donations from other parties.

For a farmer, switching entirely from one crop to another is a difficult and high-risk enterprise. But if the approach goes as planned, then they’ll soon have more than twice the income that they earned farming cocoa. This is a huge step forwards in the standard of living of these farmers, who have so far been among the land’s poorest agriculturalists.