Tipología textual del ámbito médico: los abstracts

The purpose of this section is to describe the unique features of the case to provide a context within which the results can be interpreted and compared to other studies. The case is a village community in a developing country who has recently adopted cocoa as a cash crop as part of their livelihood. The community is isolated in terms of poor communication and lack of transport facilities. The majority of the farmers in the village have primary education and only very few reached secondary school level. Villagers remain in the village after leaving school and formal employment is rare.

Before their involvement in cash cropping, the main source of income for the majority of the households was through the sale of surplus produce at the nearby village and casual labouring outside the village. A small number of households (less than ten) owned coconut and cocoa plots established in the late 1980s and 1990s and obtained income from these old coconut and cocoa plots. However, difficulties in accessing market and low production from aging cocoa trees resulted in low and infrequent incomes. In general, incomes for the households in the village were low and intermittent and many villagers found it hard to meet their basic monetary needs. Many parents could not afford to have their children continue in school, and many children in the village left school before completing their primary education or secondary education for those who managed to go further.

Subsistence agriculture has traditionally provided the community with sustenance. However, a change from primary reliance on subsistence to a lifestyle supplemented by cash in a cash economy has occurred in most communities around the case village. As such, cash is becoming more important for the community and is needed to buy clothes, kerosene (for lighting) and other various basic household needs as well as pay for children’s school fees, and medical expenses (such as trips to the hospital). Further, cash has also become an indispensable item in many non-market transactions such as for bride price payments, compensation, church contributions, and other social obligations determined by kinship. With their involvement in cocoa production, households in the case village now participate in a cash economy, although cash is relatively new to them.

Social, cultural and church activities are an important part of village life. Villagers are obliged to make substantial contributions in cash or in-kind to village events. Everyone in the village shares the same religion (COM) and the church is an important part of village life. Community members have a strong commitment to any organised church activity/project, including cocoa production to finance the community church project. Local processing of cocoa is made possible because of the church through the establishment of a fermentary (the VCD), where households can sell their cocoa in the village. Further, commitment to the church means community members contribute their labour free to the running of the fermentary.

Access to a market venue in the village initiated by the church through the VCD drove the rapid expansion of cocoa planting by almost every household in the village. Planting materials for cocoa were sourced locally from the aging cocoa trees established in the 1980s. Cocoa can be intercropped with some of their garden crops (during the establishment phase) which allowed households to regularly maintain cocoa with their food crops. Land is abundant and customarily owned and used by five tribal groups who live in the village. As such, there is no need to substitute land for growing food with land for cash cropping. Many farmers in the village had existing skills and knowledge in the production of cocoa prior to the church cocoa initiative. The CLIP program came in when the majority of households had already established cocoa plots.

Due to unreliable transport services to the village, cocoa, being an export crop, is a more suitable cash crop to be involved in than perishable food crops. This is because cocoa can be processed at the village level into a product which can be stored for a longer period awaiting

transport to the market in the urban centre. On the same note, households can sell their cocoa in the village thus overcoming the market constraints experienced by the few cocoa farmers of the 1980s. Cocoa is perennial thus can be harvested all year round, providing a regular income for households compared to the intermittent income from selling garden surplus or casual labouring.

Cocoa can be produced under the low input system normally carried out for their subsistence food production. Household labour is the main source of labour for cocoa production; however, households do have access to labour reciprocity among their kinship groups during peak labour demand periods (establishment phase). Except for the period during crop establishment, labour requirement for cocoa is low and every member of the household can take part. Processing activities are undertaken cooperatively by the men in the village. For most farmers in this study, both food and cocoa production are now equally important livelihood activities. With cocoa, villagers are able to earn a regular income and to become actively involved in a cash economy within their community.