Shifting a cocoa farm towards regenerative production always involves trade-offs.

Which shade trees make sense — fruit trees, timber species, or nitrogen-fixing varieties? At what density? How do you balance disease pressure reduction, microclimate improvement, and farmer income over a 20-year horizon? And how do you present these choices to a farmer who is rightly cautious about anything that reduces his cocoa yield in the short term?

FarmTree supports organisations in designing credible, data-backed cocoa farm plans — for individual farms or for uniform production systems across a cooperative or sourcing region. We model the full range of regenerative options, from shade tree integration and phased stand renewal to intercropping and soil improvement, so programme teams can present farmers with evidence rather than opinion.

Together with your team, we translate programme objectives into optimised farm designs, including shade tree species and planting patterns, disease management options, agroforestry practices already used in the area, and the financial projections farmers and investors need. Results are presented in a clear business case and made available in the FarmTree Platform, where designs can be reviewed, updated and adjusted as conditions evolve.

Variables for cocoa regenerative production planning

• Shade tree species selection — fruit trees, timber, nitrogen-fixing, or multi-purpose
• Shade tree density and planting patterns — spacing, rows, and integration with cocoa layout
• Phased cocoa stand renewal — uprooting and replanting ageing stands without losing farm income
• Disease management options — the role of shade, pruning, and variety selection in reducing black pod and swollen shoot pressure
• Agroforestry practices already present in the area — building on local knowledge and validated regional scenarios
• Soil improvement inputs — biochar, compost, and organic matter management
• Labour requirements by season — ensuring new practices are adoptable within farmers' existing workload

When a cocoa company sources from an area with 10,000 or 20,000 farmers, the challenge is not just farm design — it is continuity. Many sourcing regions in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire face a dual crisis: ageing cocoa plantations with declining yields, and ageing farmers with limited capital to invest in renewal. Without a structured replantation plan, production continuity is at risk — for the farmer, for the cooperative, and for the sourcing company.

FarmTree helps project developers and cocoa companies translate farm-level designs into a landscape-scale investment case — one that answers the questions that financiers, climate funds, and company procurement teams actually ask: how do we phase the renewal of poorly productive stands without leaving farmers without income? What does production look like across the full sourcing region during and after replantation? And what is the return on the investment in shade trees, soil improvement, and farmer support?

Based on a limited number of representative farm designs — typically 3 to 5 — FarmTree models costs, production continuity, and environmental benefits at landscape scale. The result is a clear economic and financial analysis, supported by transparent assumptions and dashboards that guide decision-making and reporting.

After a project is designed and funded, the real work begins.

Teams move from planning to implementation — and new questions arise.

How do we explain the investment case to farmers?

How can farmers show their investment case to micro credit or other financers?

How do we track inputs, labour and outcomes in a consistent way?

And how do we respond confidently to questions from financiers, governments or carbon buyers once the project is running?

In this module, FarmTree experts and project staff collect local data, to improve the quality of the default FarmTree data. This to develop a fully localised online data set, that feed into farm planning tools.

Learn to Operate the Platform is about building the capability to plan and monitor agroforestry projects with confidence.

FarmTree supports project teams by helping them translate project assumptions into practical data routines. We work with your team to define what needs to be measured, how data is collected in the field, and how it is structured so it can be used — not just reported.

Rather than outsourcing monitoring or analysis, Learn to Operate helps organisations develop in-house capability. 

Teams learn how to record changes at farm level through simple surveys, process changes into farm carbon stock, cash flows, and other performance indicators, and assess project impact year-after-year with updated operational progress. FarmTree experts stand by for sparring and on-the-job training, as well as receiving feedback.

As a multi-national organisation, you work in different countries on different projects. How can I report on those projects with comparable metrics? 

After the Capture Project and Learn to Operate the Project Platform, your organisation is in a strong position to embark new projects, derisk interventions and plan for impact, and report to investors. 

Note that for carbon monitoring and certification, often specialised measuring and reporting services are required. FarmTree helps you to broaden the metrics you report on. Based on local data and science of course.  

The FarmTree Model is accessible through an API, allowing to integrate the FarmTree Model in your own platform.