The Cocoa Barometer Consortium is pleased to present the first Consultation Paper in the lead-up to the 2017 Cocoa Barometer, on raising farm gate prices for cocoa farmers.
Over the past years, the cocoa sector has come a long way. Governments, companies and civil society have learned to engage each other in critical and constructive dialogue around diverse topics; which approaches to reduce child labour work best; non-competitive collaboration on yield increase programmes; streamlining training curriculums and audits for certification; the sector has developed a broad and varied vocabulary in its approaches towards a more sustainble cocoa sector.
On one topic, however, we seem to have far too little conversation; there are no viable options currently being discussed as to how farm gate prices can be raised to the level that allows farmers to escape structural poverty and attain a living income. The goal of this paper is to initiate deeper discussions around cocoa farmers’ incomes. To do this, the paper outlines the challenges and potential approaches to addressing the problem that have been put forward over the years.
This consultation paper is a first attempt to find new vocabulary on a very sensitive topic. As such, there will be mistakes and omissions in this paper. We call any and all stakeholders in the cocoa sector to provide their perspectives, corrections, additions, and responses to this paper. Feedback and input to this Consultation Paper will be used for the 2017 Cocoa Barometer, which is to be released in the fall of 2017.