Stuck in a rut: emerging cocoa cooperatives in Peru and the factors that influence their performance

Agri-cooperatives play an important role in helping resource-poor farmers reach high-value markets. In addition to linking smallholders to markets, cooperatives provide their members with various services, such as extension, credit, input subsidies, and social programmes. While the literature contains many examples of success, there has been limited discussion on the often long and turbulent process by which cooperatives develop over time and the viable options for shortcuts. This study examines four emerging cocoa cooperatives in Peru to determine their overall business viability, the key factors that advanced their development, and their capacity to address the needs of their members. Our findings suggest that strategies for supporting cooperative development have largely failed to address major internal weaknesses and the challenges posed in the external environment. The cooperatives have received time-bound, uncoordinated, and often small-scale, interventions, which have focused on infrastructure expansion and technical assistance. Important areas related to business management and governance structures, trust relationships with buyers, and sufficient working capital have largely been ignored. Shortcuts may be achieved through improvements in access to business development and financial services, deeper engagement by private sector to support the development process, and commitment by stakeholders to monitoring and critical reflection for strategy refinement

With and beyond sustainability certification: Exploring inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies in Peru and Switzerland

Certification of sustainability standards is an important governance strategy aimed at enhancing the human well-being outcomes of agri-food value chains. While the impacts of certification on well-being are positive for some farmers under certain conditions, they are insignificant or adverse for others. Many barriers can impede positive impacts of certification on well-being. Alternative or complementary strategies such as inclusive business and solidarity economy may challenge these barriers. However, since certification, inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies are studied in isolation, their precise similarities and differences, their interplay and their relative efficacy and limitations remain elusive. Therefore, this paper explores to what extent and how inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies may overcome the persistent governance and economic barriers that limit well-being impacts of certification. We explore four purposively selected cases of inclusive business and solidarity economy strategies from the cacao value chains connecting Peru and Switzerland. Results show that value chain actors combine different specific elements of the three strategies (certification, inclusiveness and solidarity) into portfolios of instruments, which reflect their value chain role and organizational missions. These instrument portfolios may address some of the barriers of certification schemes, but they come with their own challenges and limitations. We conclude that promising future research may use comparative research designs to disentangle specific instruments of inclusiveness, solidarity, and certification; to build typologies of instrument portfolios; to understand their interaction with systemic change in markets and land-use systems; and to specify the conditions under which value chain actors can use specific instruments to improve well-being outcomes of agri-food value chains

Papeles de Genero en la Cadena de Valor de Caco en el VRAEM, Peru/Gender Roles in the Cacao Value Chain in the VRAEM; Peru

Data from 61 household interviews with smallholders in the VRAEM. One section of the round of joint interviews with both household heads. The other is of the interviews with the male and female household heads separately

The Sustainable Choice: How Gendered Difference in the Importance of Ecological Benefits Affect Production Decisions of Smallholder Cacao Producing Households in Ecuador

Our research examines how the changing cultural norms and legal status in Ecuador have impacted women’s empowerment in the agricultural sector and in rural communities. Cacao provides a particularly relevant case because of its economic and ecological importance to Ecuador and the region. The traditional cacao agroforests also provide many ecological services such as habitat for many endangered plants and animals. However, they are not as profitability as the monoculture systems. Because of these economic and ecological concerns, promotion of cacao agroforests has been the focus of development efforts by the Ecuadorian government, nongovernmental organizations, and international donor agencies, many of whom also have goals of empowering Ecuadorian women (Suarez 2013). Thus, women’s involvement in cacao production would be an important indicator of women’s status in rural Ecuador. To determine the value that men on women place on these nonmarket benefits and ability of women to influence household production decisions, we conducted 350 household interviews throughout coastal Ecuador from February through July, 2013. We implemented a choice experiment separately with the principle male and female member of the household. The choice experiment consisted of the household member choosing between pictures of two parcels to determine how much more profit the participant would need to receive in order to prefer the monoculture system over the agroforestry system. By employing a Random Effects Logit regression, we were able calculate men and women’s average willingness to pay for the attributes of the cacao agroforests (Birol et al. 2006). We found that both genders place a higher value on the agroforests than monoculture corps; however, women place a higher value on these benefits than men do

Theme Overview: Functional Foods: Fad or Path to Prosperity?

Consumption of functional foods has grown worldwide, providing small-scale producers in Latin America with access to higher-value domestic and international markets. This theme illustrates efforts to support producers by strengthening the value chains of functional foods to secure their sustainability once the boom ebbs

Seeds of Gold: How Environmental Considerations Influence Cacao Production Decisions for Small Landholder Households in Northwestern Ecuador

Many factors besides profit maximization such as nonmarket ecological and social benefits influence smallholder households to adopt one agricultural production system or another. Thus, different techniques are needed that take into consideration more than monetary income to fully capture these additional benefits in order to better understand the production decision of smallholder farmers. We build upon previous work on the household model and shadow wage estimation to develop a shadow wage for Ecuadorian cacao producers that includes these nonmarket benefits. We found that the shadow wage correctly indicated that these households would prefer to use an agroforestry production system instead of the more profitable modern system because these additional nonmarket benefits in additional to the economic benefits from participating in specialty markets make the traditional cropping system more attractive to these households

Can Niche Markets for Local Cacao Varieties Benefit Smallholders in Peru and Mexico?

Growing demand from consumer both within and outside Latin America for high-quality chocolates that meet sustainable and ethical standards is opening new markets for smallholder cacao farmers. Our study examines these trends in both Peru and Mexico and provide insights into how to take advantage of these opportunities

Turning Carbon into Cash: Economic Model of Payments for Carbon Sequestration in the Dry Tropical Forest of Coastal Ecuador

This paper examines the impact of carbon payments on reforestation in coastal Ecuador. The model estimates that landowners would need to be paid between 13.59 US dollars to 41.81 US dollars per metric ton of carbon in order to be no worse off from reforesting a hectare of her land