Cocoa Barometer 2022

The 2022 Cocoa Barometer was released on December 7 by the Cocoa Barometer Consortium, 

Written by Antonie Fountain and Friedel Huetz-Adams, "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."

The findings include the following: "Living income is a human right, and a necessary precondition for all the other challenges in the cocoa sector to be properly addressed. And though it has become an accepted goal for the cocoa sector, there is a lack of concrete and time-bound commitments towards a living income, either by individual companies, by governments, or by sector-wide initiatives. Living income must become mandatory, and therefore enshrined in the due diligence regulations being drafted presently.
(...) In all this, there is very little conversation about the industry’s business model, including about how they set the prices they pay. As a result, most farmers are still not earning a living income, and not a single stakeholder group is currently doing what they should be doing to ensure farmers achieve a living income.
(...)
For living income to become a reality for cocoa farmers, action is necessary on three separate dimensions at the same time: good agricultural practices, good governance policies, and good purchasing practices. Any corporate or government effort that does not move significantly on all three dimensions at the same time will not be an adequate response to the challenge. However, not all three dimensions have an equal status. Good Agricultural Practices are only a worthwhile strategy if cocoa is sufficiently remunerative. Only when both the responsibilities of corporations and governments are properly being met does it become fair to ask farmers to invest effort and money in improving their productivity. The burden to first move lies squarely with the companies and the governments in the cocoa sector."

The cocoa barometer is available to download in English from cocoabarometer.org. Executive summary is available in English, French and Spanish.

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