Poverty is a root cause of all sustainability problems in the cocoa sector. Most cocoa farmers in West Africa are currently unable to earn a living income.
For years, the sector has tried implementing technical solutions – i.e. increasing productivity, income diversification and increasingly fostering financial inclusion through Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) – to tackle what is essentially a political problem. To date, these efforts have not met success at scale.
The cocoa sector is finally starting to discuss the price paid to cocoa farmers for their produce, including the Farm Gate Prices, which has been a taboo subject for a long time. Moreover, the question of value and power distribution in the chain is also increasingly on the agenda in the cocoa industry.
This conversation is only getting started and will require all stakeholders to be involved. With this webinar, we wish to contribute to the much-needed discussion on what political, in addition to technical, measures will be needed to ensure a living income for cocoa farmers.
We are convinced that any discussion on the (sustainable) future of the sector needs to be inclusive of all voices, and therefore pleased to welcome a representative of cocoa farmers in Ghana.
Cocoa Barometer 2020
The webinar will take place shortly after the publication of the 2020 Cocoa Barometer, a publication by the Voice Network, a global consortium of civil society organisations working on sustainability in cocoa. Antonie Fountain from the Voice Network will present the main outcomes of the new Cocoa Barometer
