00:06The
00:06Across villages in southwest of Cameroon,
00:09cocoa beans dry under the sun as they always have.
00:12But behind the scenes, the trade is changing fast.
00:16Under new EU regulations,
00:18every farm supplying cocoa to Europe must be geolocated and verified.
00:22Farmers must prove when the land was cleared
00:24and whether it complies with the cut-off date.
00:27To bridge the gap between rural realities and digital requirements,
00:31local tech companies are stepping in.
00:34The wonderful thing about our mobile application is that
00:36we've built a blockchain which doesn't permit any person to audit
00:41or manipulate the data that is gotten.
00:46So the data we get on the field is what is on the field.
00:50We can only double-cross it or double-check it with a satellite image
00:54just to be sure that what we got was actually it.
00:57But once it's in the system, it cannot be edited.
00:59The system creates a digital identity for farmers
01:02who, until now, have operated largely outside formal record systems.
01:08Settler data is cross-checked with information gathered on the ground.
01:11The result? A pass or fail verdict that could determine
01:15whether cocoa enters European ports or is rejected.
01:18Buyers say adaptation will take time.
01:21The biggest challenge is not necessarily deforestation but documentation.
01:26Many farmers inherited the land without formal titles.
01:29For me to know when my farm started, I can't even imagine
01:34because, for instance, the farms that I'm currently working on
01:41are farms that were inherited from our great-grandfathers.
01:45So they used to cultivate it, they handed it over to our parents
01:50and now we are the ones doing it.
01:52So it is very, very difficult for us to know exactly when those farms started.
01:57Others say their families cultivated land that was once abandoned or unused.
02:03Some of us may not have documents but have worked in those farms.
02:08Especially in this area, most of the farmers from these areas
02:14are working in an area which was an abandoned swampy area
02:18for at least some for 50 years, more than above, some for 30 years
02:24at least planted palm trees. The families are living in that area.
02:31Although they are the owners of the crops, they don't have any document
02:37to really show that they are the owners of the farm.
02:42Authorities say efforts to prepare farmers began before the regulation fully took effect.
02:47Through government-backed projects, over 28,000 farms in the southwest region have been mapped.
02:53Very few farms have been developed and there's very few new farms that we created after 2020.
02:59But the southwest has mostly old farms that are 50, maybe 60 and so on and so forth.
03:05So I can say that more than 40% of the farms are old farms.
03:09So if we are going by cutting down the forest and planting, then the southwest would be ready.
03:14For the regulation, it's not fair because when the regulations are coming, they don't come with incentives.
03:20So for me, I look at it as it's not fair because when you come and say farmers should not
03:26expand their farms,
03:27it means that you are constraining them to a small surface area to work in.
03:32The regulation affects cocoa, oil palm, coffee and rubber.
03:36But cocoa remains a backbone of the rural economy.
03:40Supporters say the law promotes forest conservation and climate responsibility.
03:44Critics, however, argue it risks excluding smallholders who lack resources to meet complex stressability demands.
03:51As Europe tightens its environmental standards, Cameroon's cocoa farmers are learning that access to global markets
03:57now depends not just on what they grow, but on what they can prove.
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