‘All the cocoa trees will be destroyed’

In the 1960s, yields were growing and diseases were few, Mr Adei said, but officials continued to push farmers to “produce, produce, produce”, leading to unsustainable practices and widespread deforestation.

“It was an abusive consumption of forest. It’s had a very, very, very negative impact on cocoa productivity in Cote d’Ivoire,” he told PA.

“When all is said, the government is doing the best it can to address this issue because the livelihoods of farmers depend on it.”

Planting

As the UK and Europe prepare to introduce or enforce regulations that ban the sale of commodities linked to deforestation, the Ivorian authorities are also developing methods to ensure compliance.

Fadiga Mamadou Deye, head of the cafe-cocoa board for the Bafing-Tonkpi region, has been heading up a major farmer ID card pilot, which sees the gathering and storing all kinds of data, including annual yields, tree numbers and agroforestry efforts for each farm.

Fairtrade-certified co-operatives like Yeyasso have immediately signed on but others have less financial or logistical resources to reach all farmers.

“The major challenge is the sustainability of the sector,” Mr Deye said. “If most stakeholders in the value change do not feel concerned about these challenges, it simply means that one day the co-operatives will disappear – vamoose.”

Demotivated

Yeyasso has also taken actions like geo-mapping its farms, setting up tree nurseries and planting about 140,000 new cocoa, fruit and shade trees.

But it is also the first globally to trial a new supermarket supply change initiative led by Fairtrade, which was recently greenlit by the UK’s competition watchdog.

The Shared Impact project is working to get supermarkets to buy commodities on a longer-term contract together, boosting the impact for producers and offsetting the increased risk.

With the pilot, Yeyasso hopes to double the cocoa it sells on Fairtrade terms from 20 per cent to 40 per cent, boosting the premium payments it then spends on social impact and environmental initiatives.

Collaborate

More widely, Shared Impact could help to provide more income stability for farmers, provide funds for training, enable the recruitment of more staff and offer investment certainty to struggling co-operatives, Doumbia Abou Zeid, the chairman of Yeyasso’s board said.

“When you have longer term contracts, it’s good for sustainability,” he said. “With short-term contracts nothing is certain. At any time the job can stop and so, of course, (farmers) are demotivated and will then look for better opportunities outside the cocoa industry.”

Kerrina Thorogood, director of partnerships at Fairtrade Foundation, said: “Traditionally, companies worked on their own sustainability goals, but this fragmented approach limited impact.

“Fairtrade’s groundbreaking Shared Impact initiative was created to scale up sustainability efforts by encouraging businesses to collaborate and pool sourcing for greater impact.”

This Author

Rebecca Speare-Cole is the sustainability reporter at PA.