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Report; Good Purchasing Practices in Cocoa
https://voicenetwork.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Purchasing-Practices-in-Cocoa.pdf
Many of the holistic interventions necessary in cocoa are long-term processes that will lead to change over time. However, (extreme) poverty is a daily reality for the vast majority of cocoa farmers. They cannot afford to wait until long-term processes – such as diversified income, higher productivity, or a better rural infrastructure – have come to pass. Many good purchasing practices do not require collective sector-wide action, nor do they require a long development process; they can be implemented on a relatively short term, by individual corporate actors
https://voicenetwork.cc/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/Purchasing-Practices-in-Cocoa.pdf
Many of the holistic interventions necessary in cocoa are long-term processes that will lead to change over time. However, (extreme) poverty is a daily reality for the vast majority of cocoa farmers. They cannot afford to wait until long-term processes – such as diversified income, higher productivity, or a better rural infrastructure – have come to pass. Many good purchasing practices do not require collective sector-wide action, nor do they require a long development process; they can be implemented on a relatively short term, by individual corporate actors
Report; Cocoa Barometer 2022
https://voicenetwork.cc/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Cocoa-Barometer-2022.pdf
The 2022 Cocoa Barometer provides an overview of the current sustainability developments in the cocoa sector and highlights critical issues that are not receiving sufficient attention at present, discussing a broad range of social, economic, and environmental issues. It is an endeavour to stimulate and enable stakeholders to communicate and discuss these critical issues. Cross-cutting throughout this document is the observation that we are sorely lacking both quality data and global collaboration to solve the challenges the sector faces.
https://voicenetwork.cc/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/Cocoa-Barometer-2022.pdf
The 2022 Cocoa Barometer provides an overview of the current sustainability developments in the cocoa sector and highlights critical issues that are not receiving sufficient attention at present, discussing a broad range of social, economic, and environmental issues. It is an endeavour to stimulate and enable stakeholders to communicate and discuss these critical issues. Cross-cutting throughout this document is the observation that we are sorely lacking both quality data and global collaboration to solve the challenges the sector faces.
VOICE network
https://voicenetwork.cc/
We are a global network of NGOs and Trade Unions working on sustainability in cocoa, tackling issues such as poverty, deforestation and child labour. We bring together most of the civil society organisations in the cocoa sector. Our key work is around advocacy and research, speaking truth to power for the global chocolate industry.
https://voicenetwork.cc/
We are a global network of NGOs and Trade Unions working on sustainability in cocoa, tackling issues such as poverty, deforestation and child labour. We bring together most of the civil society organisations in the cocoa sector. Our key work is around advocacy and research, speaking truth to power for the global chocolate industry.
Article; EUDR delay poses challenges for cocoa companies
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/uncertainty-amid-eudr-delay-poses-challenges-for-cocoa-companies-farmers/
It might not come as much of a surprise that Tony’s Chocolonely has expressed its support for the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). The Dutch chocolate maker is known as much for its emphasis on sustainable business practices as for the cartoonish labels that have enveloped its products since 2005. Tony’s even came out strongly against a delay in the EUDR rules designed to ensure that cocoa and six other commodities entering the European Union don’t come at the cost of forests elsewhere. What may be more surprising is that mainstream companies have also been pushing for the EUDR, which, whenever it becomes enforceable, will require an unprecedented level of monitoring and due diligence on supply chains for products entering the EU.
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/uncertainty-amid-eudr-delay-poses-challenges-for-cocoa-companies-farmers/
It might not come as much of a surprise that Tony’s Chocolonely has expressed its support for the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). The Dutch chocolate maker is known as much for its emphasis on sustainable business practices as for the cartoonish labels that have enveloped its products since 2005. Tony’s even came out strongly against a delay in the EUDR rules designed to ensure that cocoa and six other commodities entering the European Union don’t come at the cost of forests elsewhere. What may be more surprising is that mainstream companies have also been pushing for the EUDR, which, whenever it becomes enforceable, will require an unprecedented level of monitoring and due diligence on supply chains for products entering the EU.
Open letter: Support for the geolocation requirement in the draft EU regulation on deforestation fr
https://ongidef.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Lettre-aux-membres-du-conseil-et-du-parlement-europeen_Finale.pdf
We are a group of 30 Ivorian civil society organisations and 35 Ivorian farmers’ organisations representing more than 34,700 cocoa smallholders. With this letter, we would like to share with you our position on the draft European regulation on imported deforestation and in particular our full support for the geolocation requirement that it proposes and which would bring us many benefits.
We are committed to the development of a sustainable and fair agricultural supply chain. Since January 2021 and the launch of the policy dialogue between Côte d'Ivoire and the European Union on sustainable cocoa, we have been closely following the discussions and participating when invited. ...
Because, beyond identifying the origin of the cocoa, traceability is not only about tackling deforestation. It is also about social equity and an opportunity to put in place mechanisms that allow producers, the first actors in the supply chain, to make a decent living from their work. Traceability is a unique opportunity for producers to access a digitalized system that will reduce the complexity of the supply chain and ensure an improvement of their living conditions.
...
It is precisely the complexity of this supply chain that prompts us to reiterate the inclusion of a clear traceability requirement in the European regulation. We want to seize this opportunity to clean up the cocoa sector in our country. The actors in the timber sector seem to be succeeding thanks to the FLEGT VPA process and we want to draw inspiration from this experience.
For our members, small farmers, the implementation of a geolocation requirement will have many other benefits:
1. Geolocation is a necessary pre-requisite for the implementation of electronic payments to producers: a key issue for us and one that we have expressed to the Ivorian authorities.Our Ministry of Agriculture, through the Coffee and Cocoa Council, is currently working to put such payments in place via the national traceability system. The introduction of electronic payments will make payments secure and ensure a credible and sustainable source of supply. This will effectively combat the fraud that our members often fall victim to. The establishment of electronic payments may even one day allow farmers to receive payments for environmental services.
2. The geo-location of plots and producers makes it possible to clean up the farmer cooperative system insofar as each producer, thanks to a unique identifier, can only belong to one cooperative. And those who do not respect t
https://ongidef.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Lettre-aux-membres-du-conseil-et-du-parlement-europeen_Finale.pdf
We are a group of 30 Ivorian civil society organisations and 35 Ivorian farmers’ organisations representing more than 34,700 cocoa smallholders. With this letter, we would like to share with you our position on the draft European regulation on imported deforestation and in particular our full support for the geolocation requirement that it proposes and which would bring us many benefits.
We are committed to the development of a sustainable and fair agricultural supply chain. Since January 2021 and the launch of the policy dialogue between Côte d'Ivoire and the European Union on sustainable cocoa, we have been closely following the discussions and participating when invited. ...
Because, beyond identifying the origin of the cocoa, traceability is not only about tackling deforestation. It is also about social equity and an opportunity to put in place mechanisms that allow producers, the first actors in the supply chain, to make a decent living from their work. Traceability is a unique opportunity for producers to access a digitalized system that will reduce the complexity of the supply chain and ensure an improvement of their living conditions.
...
It is precisely the complexity of this supply chain that prompts us to reiterate the inclusion of a clear traceability requirement in the European regulation. We want to seize this opportunity to clean up the cocoa sector in our country. The actors in the timber sector seem to be succeeding thanks to the FLEGT VPA process and we want to draw inspiration from this experience.
For our members, small farmers, the implementation of a geolocation requirement will have many other benefits:
1. Geolocation is a necessary pre-requisite for the implementation of electronic payments to producers: a key issue for us and one that we have expressed to the Ivorian authorities.Our Ministry of Agriculture, through the Coffee and Cocoa Council, is currently working to put such payments in place via the national traceability system. The introduction of electronic payments will make payments secure and ensure a credible and sustainable source of supply. This will effectively combat the fraud that our members often fall victim to. The establishment of electronic payments may even one day allow farmers to receive payments for environmental services.
2. The geo-location of plots and producers makes it possible to clean up the farmer cooperative system insofar as each producer, thanks to a unique identifier, can only belong to one cooperative. And those who do not respect t
Paper: Price-Setting Power in Global Value Chains
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41287-022-00543-z
This paper calls for integrating price-setting power and related uneven exposure to price risks into the analysis of governance in global value chains (GVCs) as it adds to other power dimensions in producing unequal distributional outcomes. This is shown for the cocoa GVC, in which—unlike in today’s mostly liberalised market structures—the world’s top cocoa-producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, pursue price stabilisation measures. These measures address intra-seasonal producer price volatility, and recent collaboration has achieved a living-income differential on top of export prices, but such measures do not shield export and producer prices from inter-seasonal variations in world prices determined on commodity derivatives markets. Based on interviews with actors along the cocoa GVC, we argue that this is related to the price-setting power of ‘grinder-traders’ and the key role of financial hedging and trading on commodity derivatives markets in their business strategies.
From
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41287-022-00543-z
This paper calls for integrating price-setting power and related uneven exposure to price risks into the analysis of governance in global value chains (GVCs) as it adds to other power dimensions in producing unequal distributional outcomes. This is shown for the cocoa GVC, in which—unlike in today’s mostly liberalised market structures—the world’s top cocoa-producing countries, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, pursue price stabilisation measures. These measures address intra-seasonal producer price volatility, and recent collaboration has achieved a living-income differential on top of export prices, but such measures do not shield export and producer prices from inter-seasonal variations in world prices determined on commodity derivatives markets. Based on interviews with actors along the cocoa GVC, we argue that this is related to the price-setting power of ‘grinder-traders’ and the key role of financial hedging and trading on commodity derivatives markets in their business strategies.
From
Tooze: The Closing of the Cocoa Frontier
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-196-the-closing-of-the
What first catches the eye about this supply chain are the spectacular hierarchies of power. For journalistic purposes and in NGO campaigns, these hierarchies are commonly dramatized in two clichés. The first is the contrast between the tiny peasant producer and the agro-industrial multinationals. The second is that between Western consumers of chocolate and child labourers in the cocoa plantations.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-196-the-closing-of-the
What first catches the eye about this supply chain are the spectacular hierarchies of power. For journalistic purposes and in NGO campaigns, these hierarchies are commonly dramatized in two clichés. The first is the contrast between the tiny peasant producer and the agro-industrial multinationals. The second is that between Western consumers of chocolate and child labourers in the cocoa plantations.
Unilever Supplier Lists
Know-the-Chain's scorecard for food giant Unilever says approvingly that the company is "disclosing more information on its forced labor policies and practices than its peers across all themes". When looking at the actual supplier lists the company provides, it shows how low the bar is: it will have company names but no contact details, adressess, not even the country in all cases. Having for instance rainforest alliance certification codes available would also be a great help in verifying claims made. Finding the supplier lists took some googling as well, although they all seemed to be linked from this page.
Here are the ones I found:
Global Cocoa Suppliers – direct sourcing
2020 Soybean Suppliers Disclosure
2020 Tea Suppliers Disclosure
2020 Palm Oil supplier Disclosure
Know-the-Chain's scorecard for food giant Unilever says approvingly that the company is "disclosing more information on its forced labor policies and practices than its peers across all themes". When looking at the actual supplier lists the company provides, it shows how low the bar is: it will have company names but no contact details, adressess, not even the country in all cases. Having for instance rainforest alliance certification codes available would also be a great help in verifying claims made. Finding the supplier lists took some googling as well, although they all seemed to be linked from this page.
Here are the ones I found:
Global Cocoa Suppliers – direct sourcing
2020 Soybean Suppliers Disclosure
2020 Tea Suppliers Disclosure
2020 Palm Oil supplier Disclosure
Mars' Cocoa and Forests Action Plan
https://www.mars.com/about/policies-and-practices/cocoa-and-forests-policy
As part of our goal of sourcing 100% of our cocoa through our Responsible Cocoa program by 2025, we aim to achieve a?deforestation and conversion-free?supply chain (as defined by the Accountability Framework Initiative (AFi)). But not certified through independent scheme.
https://www.mars.com/about/policies-and-practices/cocoa-and-forests-policy
As part of our goal of sourcing 100% of our cocoa through our Responsible Cocoa program by 2025, we aim to achieve a?deforestation and conversion-free?supply chain (as defined by the Accountability Framework Initiative (AFi)). But not certified through independent scheme.