Cocoa Barometer 2018 report published

Cocoa growing communities, it says, particularly in West Africa, are facing poverty, child labour and deforestation that have been made worse by a rapid fall in prices for cocoa. Widely touted efforts in the cocoa industry to improve the lives of farmers, communities and the environment made in the past decade are, according to the report, having little impact: in fact, the modest scope of the proposed solutions does not even come close to addressing the scale of the problem.

Smallholder cocoa farmers in Cote d’Ivoire – the world’s biggest cocoa producer, who are already struggling with poverty, have seen their income from cocoa decline by as much as 36 % over one year. That fact reflects the world market price for cocoa, which saw a steep decline between September 2016 and February 2017. Farmers bear the risks of a volatile price; and there is no concerted effort by industry or governments to alleviate even a part of the burden of this income shock, the report claims.

This price collapse was, it says, caused by overproduction of cocoa in past years, at the direct expense of native forests, claiming that this can be equally attributed to corporate disinterest in the human and environmental effects of the supply of cheap cocoa, and to an almost completely absent government enforcement of environmentally protected areas.