Outgrower project
Working with confidence
Satocao’s quick success in penetrating the Santomean market was greatly helped by its development of a number of autonomous outgrower hubs capable of supplying cocoa that satisfies the company’s stringent quality controls. In fact, the island’s small and medium sized planters are encouraged to organise themselves at a village level. As an integral part of the technical services offered to them, including training in cocoa agriculture and access to equipment and agricultural inputs, the outgrowers are taught to value their own cocoa crops and apply best practices helping them to realise their own potential.
A great help for the communities
Satocao’s impact on the organisational, social and agronomic capacity of the village outgrowers is already visible.
Since 2011, Satocao brought on board several partner-farmers, currently representing 97 outgrower communities encompassing 3,083 individual planters.
Satocao offers them a fair and stable market price, guaranteed to be locally competitive. The company works to ensure that even the most isolated communities are reached ensuring that they are able to sell their cocoa. The company always respects purchasing agreements and the farmers need not fear being left with unsold cocoa at the end of the day.
Satocao allow their outgrower farmers the opportunity to improve both their production standards and productivity by pairing traditional practices with modern farming processes for quality control. The construction of nurseries and the emphasis on replanting aging cocoa farms encourages the outgrowers to invest their energies into the local cocoa culture that has been central to their way of life for generations. Each partnership is established with a respect for the particularities of the specific local agronomic and social circumstances in mind.
