Participatory methodologies for sustainable technological innovation in cocoa systems: at the Colombian southwest region

In Colombia, cocoa has positioned as a production system that stimulates territorial development processes in areas affected by violence, where a presence of illegal economies exists. It is a crop that enables productive reconversion by offering medium and long-term economic alternatives for farming family’s livelihoods. In this context, the challenge of reconverting to cocoa involves not only the analysis of models, from a technological perspective, but also from the cultural understanding that these transformations imply.

The Alliance Bioversity international-CIAT, ICCO Cooperation and the Red Adelco have made an inter-institutional articulation to implement the Rutas PDET program, which is part of a territorial stabilization process settled in the peace agreement for the termination of the armed conflict in Colombia. This program is fundered by the European Fund for Peace and focuses on accompanying dairy and cocoa value chains in three departments of the country, through three main components: technological innovation, improvement of road infrastructure, and business development.

This lecture focuses on the methodology used in the implementation of the technological innovation component, at the cocoa production system by showing the analysis carry on of the social, economic and environmental subsystems, and the transversal incorporation of a differential approach of generational and gender integration. This process involved contextualization actions, exchange of knowledge between farmers (farmer to farmer), co-design of territorial technological models and adaptation of models at the farm scale. This methodology seeks to accomplish sustainability of the SAF and the territorial stabilization model, based on the reconstruction of the social network.

In a post-conflict scenario, the challenge of reconverting to cocoa involves not only the analysis of models, from a technological perspective, but also from the cultural understanding that these transformations imply.