Why farmers, not industry, must decide the future of cocoa (commentary)

 

• As companies, NGOs, and experts look to agroforestry to solve many of the sustainability challenges facing the cocoa sector, Mighty Earth analyst Sam Mawutor argues that the cocoa agroforestry ‘revolution’ must be one led by farmers
• This article is a commentary. The views expressed are those of the authors, not necessarily of Mongabay.

Over recent years, consumers have become increasingly aware of the bitter-sweet legacy left by the chocolate industry in the countries that supply a majority of the world’s cocoa.

While cocoa has provided a critical source of revenue for smallholder farmers and governments in West Africa, cocoa growing communities have also suffered from years of predatory market practices, declining commodity prices, and unfair terms of trade. These perverse market dynamics – coupled with things such as conflicting agriculture and forestry policies, onerous land and tree tenure laws that penalize farmers, and low productivity by poor farm management practices – have contributed to severe problems in the cocoa sector. These include farmer poverty, rampant deforestation, persistent child labor, frequent pesticide poisonings, and declining food and livelihood security.

Just two countries – the Ivory Coast and Ghana – between them account for 60% of the world’s cocoa production. And it is in these two countries where the issues of farmer poverty, deforestation and child labor are most prevalent.

The good news is that these problems are now recognized by cocoa traders, chocolate companies and public officials in Ghana and Ivory Coast, as well as in consumer countries. Most major chocolate companies now have sustainable cocoa sourcing policies in place that intend to address deforestation, child labor, living incomes, and other issues. Furthermore, collective efforts taken by industry and governments, such as through the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI), have promised to end deforestation, and to set up joint monitoring mechanisms to respond to incidents of forest clearance.

The bad news, though, is that these individual and collective efforts have been slow to yield results on the ground. The reasons for this are many and varied, but include insufficient efforts to trace indirect cocoa supply chain sources, structural problems in cocoa commodity markets that fail to adequately incentivize sustainable cocoa, ‘blame-gaming’ between companies and government departments, and a failure to listen to the needs of farmers and bring them into the development of industry-wide solutions as equal partners.

As a result, recent assessments by Mighty Earth and other NGOs show that most chocolate companies are still failing to guarantee consumers products that are truly free from environmental destruction and human rights violations. To end deforestation, restore soil health and biodiversity into cocoa farming systems, uplift the economic position of cocoa-producing households, and end child labor on cocoa farms, industry actors and governments agencies must work with farmers on an entirely different approach to cocoa production.