February 14, 2023
16h
Merc12
Chocolate manufacturers are increasingly investing in sustainable cocoa sourcing practices. Nonetheless, following two decades of sustainability initiatives in the cocoa sector, numerous severe, intractable, and often interrelated environmental, social, and economic sustainability challenges remain. For sustainable sourcing practices to succeed and generate the desired changes in cocoa growing communities, two "basic understandings" are crucial. First, it requires understanding the sustainability challenges faced by cocoa producers. Second, it requires a good understanding of factors that influence farmers' decisions to implement or adopt sustainable cocoa farming practices. Currently, many questions remain regarding the sustainability issues on cocoa farms when assessed in a comprehensive way and the influence of numerous factors on the adoption of sustainable practices remain poorly understood. This dissertation seeks to address these knowledge gaps from the broad starting point of farm-level sustainability.
The research is guided by two lead questions. The first research question: "Which key sustainability challenges can be identified on cocoa farms?" aims to capture the multi-dimensionality and interrelatedness of farm-level sustainability among predominantly smallholder cocoa producers in Ecuador and Uganda. Within the second research question: "Which factors influencing practice implementation can be identified in cocoa farming systems?" the focus is placed on the role of value chain factors and household labour for sustainable cocoa production. Combining multi-criteria sustainability assessment and econometric modelling, this dissertation shows that major sustainability issues lie in the social and governance dimensions and that the continuous focus on environmentally-friendly cocoa production demands economic trade-offs from farmers. This work additionally demonstrates that downstream companies have various levers to improve the sustainability performance of their upstream suppliers; for example, through capacity building and stable, long-term relationships. Furthermore, household labour plays an essential role in the future of sustainable cocoa production. While agro-environmental decisions are mainly taken at farm level, social and governance issues, including farmer organisation or rural out-migration, are rather influenced by the socio-cultural setting in which farmers operate. Generating the necessary changes thus requires interventions beyond the farm level, in strong collaboration with diverse actors.