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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

24. Cocoa Certification in West Africa: The Need for Change

Authors : Enrique Uribe-Leitz, François Ruf

Published in: Sustainable Global Value Chains

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to discuss various implementation challenges of current cocoa certification schemes at the farm level in West Africa. To this end, the chapter presents a selection of certification criteria (requirements) from the two leading certification schemes: UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance. The criteria selected exemplify typical implementation problems in the West African cocoa sector, though they are by no means an exhaustive list.

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Footnotes
1
In January 2018, the Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ. It is planned that in 2019 a single, new agriculture certification programme built upon the best elements of both existing programmes will be published. Both the Rainforest Alliance and UTZ schemes will continue to run in parallel until the publication of new programme at the end of 2019.
 
2
Principle number and total number of criteria within principle are presented as “x.y”, where “x” is a number of principle and “y” is a total number of criteria within this principle, e.g. principle 1 and 11 criteria within it are presented as “1.11”. Here is the total listing of criteria: 1.11; 2.9; 3.6; 4.9; 5.19; 6.20; 7.6; 8.9; 9.5; 10.6 = 100.
 
3
See pages 9 and 10 of the Sustainable Agriculture Standard (SAN 2010).
 
4
Ghanaian covers criteria in principles: 1, 2, 3, 5 and 8, while Ivorian covers criteria in principles: 2, 3, 5 and 10.
 
5
On 31 August 2017, the Rainforest Alliance (RA) and the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) signed an agreement for the transfer of ownership of the shared SAN/RA certification system entirely to the Rainforest Alliance. The RA became the sole owner and operator of the certification scheme on 1 January 2018.
 
6
UTZ Certified refers to ‘sharecropper’ in their definitions; however, their certification system has no provision in place to ensure that sharecroppers directly benefit from certification.
 
7
The conjunction of the life cycles of the cocoa farmer and his/her cocoa farm is one key element of cocoa cycle’s productivity (Ruf and Siswoputranto 1995).
 
8
Sample size 98 farmers, Côte d’Ivoire only.
 
9
Sample size 140 farmers, Côte d’Ivoire only, 120 certified.
 
10
SAN/RA version 2017 now includes the terms ‘smallholder’, ‘group member’ and ‘worker’.
 
11
Other examples are: tree density, child-labour, protection equipment, etc.
 
12
This criterion is new to the latest revision of the SAN standard and was not present in its 2010 version (see SAN 2017).
 
13
Our dataset indicates 2008 as year when certification was first achieved by various cooperative (groups).
 
14
Our dataset indicates that only 3 farmer groups (out of 28 interviewed) are farmer-led. All other are led by ‘partners’ in the value chain (exporters, middlemen, etc.) or NGOs.
 
15
These lists, where products are being categorised as ‘banned’ or in the ‘watch list’ are being defined by the certification schemes. These lists usually take as a basis internationally recognized lists of the UN, FAO and or WHO. Additionally, certification schemes restrict these lists even further with the intention of reaching higher environmental goal. Unfortunately, there are no studies that prove whether the objective of the certification is being achieved. For example, there are substitution effects among active ingredients and/or these lists create regional production restrictions for those producers where there are no chemical alternatives available. Therefore, more research needs to be done regarding the consequences of these lists at the farm level in different growing regions.
 
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Metadata
Title
Cocoa Certification in West Africa: The Need for Change
Authors
Enrique Uribe-Leitz
François Ruf
Copyright Year
2019
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14877-9_24