Ritter Sport commitment improves living standards for farmers in Nicaragua

According to the report by the Südwind Institute for Economy and Ecumenism, Ritter Sport’s long-term approach of supporting Nicaraguan farmers for years by professionalising cocoa farming to improve the quality of the product and therefore ensure that they receive good prices for their cocoa has significantly and noticeably improved their living conditions. The institute summarises its assessment of the Cacaonica initiative in this new evaluation report by saying, “Ritter Sport has made a major contribution to promoting sustainable cocoa cultivation and the consolidation of cocoa production with the highest quality standards in Nicaragua”. In turn, this has resulted in improved living standards for the farmers.

Under the supervision of the Südwind Institute’s Dr. Pedro Morazán, an evaluation mission was conducted in March of 2015 in which cooperatives, individual producers, government representatives and representatives from NGOs were visited and interviewed. In addition, focus group discussions were held with the cooperatives participating in the Cacaonica project and some 200 farmer families were interviewed. In his closing report, expert Dr. Morazán claims that the commercialisation of cocoa goes hand in hand with overcoming poverty structures for many of the farming families. According to Dr. Morazán, the main driving factors behind this are the systematic work on the cocoa’s quality, the prices paid and the increases in the amount of cocoa cultivated.