Assessing sustainable farming practices among cocoa farmers in Ecuador and Uganda
(2023)
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- Abstract
- Chocolate manufacturers are increasingly sourcing "sustainable" cocoa. Yet following two decades of sustainability initiatives in the 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 and hold research gaps: a) the sustainability challenges faced by cocoa producers and b) factors that influence farmers' decisions to implement sustainable cocoa farming practices. This research is guided by two lead questions: 1) What are the main sustainability challenges for cocoa farms? and 2) Which factors influence practice implementation in cocoa farming systems? This dissertation integrates multi-criteria sustainability assessment to capture the multi-dimensionality and interrelatedness of cocoa farm-level sustainability with econometric modelling to assess the role of value chain factors and household labour for sustainable cocoa production. It shows that major sustainability issues lie in the social and governance dimensions and that the focus on environmentally-friendly cocoa demands economic trade-offs from farmers. This work also shows that downstream companies have various levers to improve the sustainability among their 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 on farms, 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.
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Citations
Tennhardt, L. M. (2023). Assessing sustainable farming practices among cocoa farmers in Ecuador and Uganda. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/241457