Agroforestry Cooperative Development Project

The coffee and cacao value chains are strategic for the national economy, and in particular for the provinces and the rural families of the eastern region where the Agroforestry Cooperative Development Project (PRODECAFE) will operate. Coffee is part of the “basic food basket” (household consumption); the country must import increasing quantities to cover domestic demand, while only exporting small volumes of high-quality coffee. Cocoa is not part of the basket: its trade deficit is lower, and the time when its export potential will be reached is apparently closer.

Through PRODECAFE, its third project in Cuba, IFAD can play an important role in supporting the Government's efforts to modernize and achieve sustainable growth of the country’s agroforestry sector, by increasing the physical, human, social and environmental assets in the cooperatives as the most important actors in the country’s agricultural economy. PRODECAFE will support the gradual transformation of the agroforestry cooperatives into modern forms of enterprises, with efficient production and provision of services, capable of adapting to the market and the effects of climatic change, as well as other negative external impacts.