How are the new grafted trees and seedlings? I’m glad you asked!

After two weeks in Banda Aceh completing training and progress reports, Robert headed back to his second home in Simpang Jernih to see how the new grafts done by the women during training were holding up.

 Here he is, headed back up the river

 

And I’m happy to report that in all three nurseries with a total of 670 but and top grafts, 40% have successfully “taken,” and the remaining 60% are still in the running but will need a few more days to make sure the graft is holding.

60% of the 320 side grafts on mature trees in the field were also successful.

Those are pretty great results.

So this week Robert and the women will do another 150 side grafts and 210 bud/top grafts in the nursery.

Next: how JMD is doing in its quest to get funding from one of the 4 billion RFPs it has answered. 

Hint: it's not for lack of trying!!

A new crop of grafting experts emerges in Aceh Timur

As I’ve said many times before here, grafting of any type is an art form.  And cocoa grafting is especially challenging, since the places where cocoa grows best are not necessarily greenhouse-like conditions.  But the women of Simpag Jernih, Pante Kera and Batu Sumbang proved equal to the challenge and during the week-long training grafted hundreds of buds and branches onto both nurser rootstock and mature trees in their fields.

The trainer held the training twice, in two different locations, for the convenience of the farmers, to eliminate additional boat trips between villages.

The trainings covered many aspects of a successful grafting process.  JMD has given this training before, but refreshers are always needed; this is one of the most important, and difficult skills foe a successful cocoa farmer to master.

There was a little classroom presentation, in which Robert assisted:

And a bit of field-based explanation prior to the practicum:

Then the farmers went straight to the nursery to learn the proper way to prepare the shoots for grafting, and the tree or seedling for accepting the graft

Robert also took a short video of the women practicing grafting the rootstock in the nursery, that JMD willl post to its Facebook Page (unfortunately it is too big to load onto this page; we're just learning abou t how to control the file size of videos).  Even if you don’t understand Acehnese or Bahasa you can tell they are having fun; one of the great things about this project is that it takes skills the women already possess (their ability to do very delicate and exacting work with their hands) and transfers it to an economically viable livelihood. 

Each woman has been given grafting tools and tape by the program, and did many top and bud grafts in the nursery, onto which were placed plastic baggies for added protection.

Grafts in the farmers’ plantations required training in side grafting and protection.

This is the first training that our three new farmer beneficiaries, from Batu Subang, were attending.

And it’s also the beginning of a “training of the trainer” for a farmer in Pante Kera, who’s been very successful on her own farm and will act as a peer mentor to her colleagues

Was this a great training or was this a great training? 

.

“Say NO to Conflict Palm Oil Month" was a success . . .

. . . but according to Rainforest Action Network, there’s still a lot to do.  So I’m posting their call to action, and hope that many of you in the California area can attend the Summit.

http://www.ran.org/palm_oil_action_leaders_summit?utm_campaign=poal_bump_final&utm_medium=email&utm_source=rainforestactionnetwork

Don't Miss Out: Palm Oil Action Leaders Summit

 RAN’s Conflict Palm Oil Campaign is on the way to victory, but we’ll need committed and passionate activists to lead the charge and raise the stakes for the Snack Food 20. We're committed to bringing together a powerful team and giving you the skills and training you need to be effective and have fun.

The Palm Oil Action Team is making some of the largest companies in the world change their policies and their practices to protect the precious rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia. We're winning, but there is still more work to be done. That's why I am so excited to invite you to join the Palm Oil Action Leaders Summit.

When you apply to join the Summit and become a Palm Oil Action Leader, here’s what you’ll get:

• Attend the Palm Oil Action Leaders Summit in San Francisco, CA from March 27 - 31st where you will be trained in designing and coordinating creative actions, communicating clearly to the public about campaign work, and how to incite and inspire your community to take action!
• Put your new knowledge from the Summit into practice by organizing creative actions in your community -- publicly exposing the ills of Conflict Palm Oil and holding PepsiCo and other companies that are using this controversial ingredient to account.
• Be part of an incredible team of activists from around the country from March to September 2015 (and beyond!) that collaborate and support each other as part of the Conflict Palm Oil campaign.
• In summary: Make an impact for rainforests, and the people and animals that depend on them, by gaining new organizing skills, being a part of a powerful team and having FUN!

What: Palm Oil Action Leaders Summit

When: March 27-31, 2015

Where: San Francisco and Point Reyes, California

Who can join: Whether you are brand new to RAN’s campaigns or are a seasoned activist, we encourage you to apply. We will be looking for diversity in background, geographical location and experience in applicants.

click here to apply right now!

Up Next: the now 31-member women’s cocoa farm association has become grafting champions.  THEY are helping save the rainforest in Aceh.  You can too--join them!

The women work together to distribute fertilizer as another cocoa cultivation season begins

Last week the women  cocoa farmers finished their fifth training in the series funded by the Embassy of Finland. (Yay, Finland!)  Robert has taken some amazing photos of the bud and stem grafting practicums, which I’ll post as soon as we receive them.

Before the training, however, Santa came early to Simpang Jernih and Pante Kera, in the form of pre-made organic fertilizer and a growth/pest-control hormone that we are trying like mad to analyze to see how we can make it ourselves.  The contents are a more heavily guarded secret than Kentucky Fried Chicken.  But a trip to the university lab might be able to crack it.  We’ll see. The object of the project, after all, is to provide the women with the information necessary to make all their fertilizer and pest control products at home, from things pretty much lying around the house or farm or, in rare cases, easily purchased at a local shop.

First thing the women had to do when the fertilizer arrived at Simpang Jernih was to load half of it on the trusty river raft (rebuilt and safely re-tethered to its iron cable after the rainstorms and flooding of last month) for the trip to Pante Kera (and our new 4-farmer village of Batu Sumbang—woo-hoo!).

At the home of one of the cocoa farmers in Pante Kera, Robert distributed the liquid fertilizer/hormone to the group.

Here’s the association’s warehouse, complete with nifty sign indicating their name (Pilar Tani) and location.  The elected Chair of the association is making sure that each woman gets the right amount of fertilizer.  Few women in Aceh want to draw attention to themselves by acting and being seen as leaders, but this association is an exception, and JMD is working with the more outspoken and confident members to encourage other women to share in association decisions and act as peer trainers.

 

Of course, when it rains it pours and when it doesn't it's dry as a bone, so the application of fertilizer is going to have to wait a bit until the area gets a bit more rain.  No wonder the world is experiencing a cocoa shortage-- it's the toughest job around!

It's grafting training month for the cocoa farmers

Well, the grant applications are all in--for this month anyway—we just have to sit back and wait for some forward-thinking donor to realize that the only way to save the rainforest is one cocoa farmer at a time.

Next month: AUSAID won’t know what hit ‘em!

In the meantime, Robert and the training expert are preparing for next week’s formal and field-based training on probably one of the most important topics in sustainable cocoa farming: grafting.  It’s a science and an art, all rolled into one, and if you are successful at it, the world is your oyster—or rather, your healthy bit of scion wood.

Some of our farmers have already developed a bit of an aptitude for this practice; grafting training isn’t something JMD just provides once and then forgets about.  It really has to be practiced over and over. Last year when 5 women took a tour of a  commercial cocoa plantation they saw first-hand how a large nursery and grafting operation worked, and were each given 10 branches of one of the superior cocoa varieties   grown in Aceh.  

 We’re watching those grafts pretty carefully, but they still have about a year to go before they start producing.

For this training we’ve purchased 200 more superior pieces of scion wood (JMD calls them “superior cones”) and the women will be grafting their little hearts out.  However, with a target of 600 trees per HA, and each woman farming between .5 and 3 HAs of cocoa  . . . well, you can see where this is leading.  We need a LOT more scion wood!  That’s one of the things we hope to be producing by the end of this LCF (Finland Embassy)-funded project: home-grown grafting stock for all the rootstock the women are now growing in the nursery.

Like I’ve said before, cocoa cultivation is not for the faint of heart.

Aceh Province: Where men are men . . . and women grow cocoa!

The sun has finally come out, and the women are back at work

In Aceh, this was a rainy season for the books.  Only yesterday did the river communities in Aceh Timur locate the transport raft and re-connect it to the iron cable that snapped during heavy flooding this season, leaving many without access to markets, healthcare, or businesses.  Life on the buffer of the rainforest is not for the faint of heart!

These drying racks have been extremely helpful—and as you can see, they are fairly simple contraptions.  But the combination of air flow and helpful working height produces a far better quality bean with much less effort—provided it isn’t pouring cats and dogs.

But the waters are receding, the raft is working again, and the cocoa farmers in Simpang Jernih and Pante Kera are making up for lost time, spraying their surviving nursery trees to ward off diseases that could be caused by excess moisture.

These backpack sprayers have also been a godsend. JMD can usually raise money to distribute one per nursery but they really need 2, since the nurseries are getting so big.  Anyone wishing to donate a backpack sprayer and organic pesticide to the women of Simpang Jernih for their nursery can visit JMD's website at http://jmd.or.id/join-us/ and contribute $50—that is all it takes to help keep 3,000 cocoa seedlings alive.

Robert was able to visit all of the farmers finally, and reports that while this harvest, being the tail end, is slim, it is still a 50% increase in last year’s production. Another bullet dodged in the heart of the jungle.

This February, help Rainforest Action Network stop conflict palm oil

Setting the Record Straight on PepsiCo’s Lackluster Palm Oil Commitment

Between now and the end of February, Palm Oil Activists around the world are putting PepsiCo in a Time Out until it cuts Conflict Palm Oil. Why a Time Out? PepsiCo is acting like a stubborn child - one who wants all the  toys (or profits) but none of the   responsibility. We need your help to hold PepsiCo to account.

PepsiCo is the largest globally distributed snack food company in the world and is a major user of Conflict Palm Oil. PepsiCo’s continued unwillingness to take responsibility for the consequences of the palm oil in its supply chain is shocking. The company continues to fry its chips and fill its products with palm oil sourced from controversial, unknown plantations -- products like its Quaker Oats Chewy bars that end up in lunch boxes every day.

Thanks to your hard work and consumer pressure, our campaign on PepsiCo is building momentum. But the forests are still falling and we are not there yet. Tropical rainforests, endangered wildlife and exploited laborers need PepsiCo to start taking this issue seriously and to take immediate steps to create real change. It’s our job to keep the pressure up, and demand that PepsiCo demonstrates to its customers that it can be trusted to provide products free of Conflict Palm Oil.

Here’s how you can take action right now:

STEP 1: Download and print a handful of copies of THIS card (on recycled paper, of course).

STEP 2: Ask your friends, family members, colleagues and people on the street to sign the card to demand that PepsiCo Cut Conflict Palm Oil! There are a lot of great ways to collect a ton of cards at once:

•   Grab some friends and head out to a busy spot in your town. 

•   Set up a table at a grocery store or farmers market and ask passerby’s to stop and sign a card.

•   Ask for a few minutes on the agenda of any gathering that you are a part of. You could ask everyone in your office at a staff meeting, all of your peers in a class or all of the members of your club/sports team/religious group etc. 

•   Ask a local business if they can keep a stack of cards on their counter (leave an envelope for people to leave their cards for you to mail in!)

•   Share this blog post on Facebook and Twitter to invite people in your circles to join in on the action.

STEP 3: Mail your cards! If you live in the US, PepsiCo’s mailing address is:
PepsiCo, Inc. 
700 Anderson Hill Road
Purchase, NY 10577

Indonesia's regional address:

PepsiCo Indonesia

Sudirman Plaza

Jl Jend Sudirman Kav 76-78 Sudirman Plaza

Setiabudi, Setia Budi

Jakarta Selatan 12910 DKI Jakarta

Together, we have the power to transform our broken food system, force the palm oil industry to respect the rights of workers and forest communities, and protect rainforests which are the homes of the last wild orangutans. Put PepsiCo in a Time Out by mailing your card right now!

http://www.ran.org/?utm_campaign=poat_postcard&utm_medium=email&utm_source=rainforestactionnetwork