RESEARCH NEEDS FOR SUSTAINABLE COCOA PRODUCTION IN GHANA

Certification can be used as an incentive for adoption of the intervention and the farmers receive a premium for their cocoa beans. However, some say certification is only sustainable if it is additional to high yields that result from training in GAPs (Anon., personal communication).

It is important to involve the private sector when using certification in the project, to ensure a market for the certified beans. However, it appears that at the moment the market for certified cocoa beans is saturated. When the premium serves as a compensation for loss of income due to lower production, it can be very harmful for the farmers when this premium cannot be paid (Anon., personal communication).

Certification is an expensive process and it is difficult for farmers to arrange it themselves. Especially when the farm is too small, it will eat into the profit too much to be economically viable. This might be easier when the farmers are part of a cooperative (Anon., personal communication). In the report by KPMG for ICCO (2012) one of the identified knowledge gaps relates the cost benefit analysis of certification for cocoa producers and the effect of farm size on this balance (Basso, Schouten, Renner, & Pfann, 2012).

Biodiversity is a component of all the current certification standards, however it generally receives limited attention. Rainforest Alliance certification has the broadest focus on biodiversity. However additional conservation requirements could be fused it into certification (Anon. personal communication). The French company Touton is actually going beyond certification in establishing a market for cocoa that has been sourced from producers that not only adhere to the certification standards but pay extra attention to biodiversity (Anon., personal communication). However, premium payments on their own are not expected to be sufficient to really motivate farmers to contribute to biodiversity conservation on cocoa farms. Farmers should not just adhere to the minimal requirements, but should be made to understand why it is important (Anon., personal communication.).

Finally, certification should not be done in a compulsory way, where farmers would not be able to sell their cocoa beans when they do not meet the standards. This would put the burden of solving sustainability issues in cocoa on the producing countries instead of on the producers and consumers together (Anon., personal communication). Moreover, when farmers would not be able to meet the requirements they might shift to other crops, which would have an even bigger negative impact on biodiversity since cocoa production systems are far more biodiversity friendly than oil palm or maize farms (Anon., personal communication).