Baseline for assessing the impact of Fairtrade certification on cocoa farmers and cooperatives in Ghana

Peer Revie

Baseline for assessing the impact of fairtrade certification on cocoa farmers and cooperatives in Côte d’Ivoire

Report commissioned by Fairtrade Africa and Fairtrade International. World Agroforestry Centre, Nairobi, Kenya. Farms-Forests-LandscapesIn 2014, Fairtrade International, Fairtrade Africa, the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) and Bioversity International initiated a collaboration for the development of a multidimensional baseline on small-scale cocoa farmers and their cooperatives in West Africa. The baseline is expected to provide a fuller understanding of the current situation for Fairtrade cocoa production and marketing as well as provide the foundation for rigorous assessment of outcomes and impacts of Fairtrade certification on cocoa cooperatives and smallholder households in West Africa in the future. Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, the two largest Fairtrade cocoa producers in West Africa, provide about 68 percent of the cocoa that is sold under Fairtrade terms in global markets. In 2013, the year this study was commissioned, the volume of Fairtrade cocoa sold from West Africa reached 133 400 tonnes, involving 71 cooperatives and producer associations and 138 800 farmers. Most of this cocoa originated from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. The rapid growth in the number of cocoa-producing organizations joining the Fairtrade system in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana provides a unique opportunity to build a baseline on Fairtrade cocoa producers in West Africa for future monitoring and impact assessment. This report focuses on the Fairtrade cocoa baseline for Côte d’Ivoire (a similar report is available for Ghana). It describes the conceptual framework and methods used in the design of the baseline, followed by an assessment of the context in Côte d’Ivoire. Key features of the baseline data at the cooperative and household levels are covered in detail. The report concludes with some recommendations to Fairtrade for expanding Fairtrade International in Côte d’Ivoire and for follow-up actions for future baseline work

National and International Policies and Policy Instruments in the Development of Agroforestry in Chad

The potential of agroforestry to improve livelihoods and mitigate climate change and environmental degradation has been widely recognized, especially within the context of climate-smart agriculture. However, agroforestry opportunities have not been fully exploited because of several reasons, among which are adverse policies and legislations. However, many countries do not have a full understanding of how their policy and institutional environment may affect agroforestry development. We aim to fill this gap by looking at the particular case of Chad. The method used included examining data from: (i) literature reviews of important national and international polices, strategies, and legislation governing access to land and trees, among which are ‘La Loi 14’, Chad’s 2010 poverty reduction strategy paper, draft zero of the National Environmental Policy, (ii) interviews and focus group discussions with NGOs, government officials, and farmers, and (iii) surveys with 100 households. Results show that Chad has no specific agroforestry policy but opportunities for agroforestry can be found in some of the above-mentioned policy documents and government strategies. Most stakeholders interviewed had positive attitudes towards agroforestry, but uptake of the practice is handicapped by poor understanding of the forestry law by farmers and forestry officials. Gaps in existing laws give room for rent-seekers to collect individual (USD 272–909) and collective (USD 36–1818) access fees to trees on both forest and farmland. We propose that the government of Chad should unmask elements of agroforestry in existing policies and policy instruments to demonstrate its importance in responding to livelihood and environmental challenges in the country

Community forest enterprises (CFEs) as Social Enterprises: Empirical evidence from Cameroon

Community forest enterprises (CFEs) trade to meet the economic, social, and environmental challenges of their community, just as Social Enterprises (SE) do. The question is if CFEs also could and should be understood in terms of SEs. To explore this question, this study determines the extent to which CFEs can be classified as SEs, using CFEs in Cameroon as a case study. Based on the three-dimensional EMES framework in combination with the typology of SEs of Alter, CFEs are classified along a continuum of purely non-profits, non-profits with income-generating activities, and SEs. Document review, interviews, and focus group discussions with CFE management, youths, women, and indigenous groups in 38 communities were used for data collection and subsequently analyzed. Of the 38 CFEs investigated, only 11% could be defined as SEs, 63% are non-profit organizations with income-generating activities and 26% operate as traditional non-profit organizations. The majority of the CFEs (63%) engage in commercial activities for revenue generation but lack the skills and organizational setup to employ full business approaches coupled with financial discipline and community ownership, which are core values of SEs. Operating as SEs would permit CFEs to be financially and environmentally sustainable and thus they could easily contribute to community development. However, moving CFEs from “non-profits with income generation” to SEs requires (i) a change in mindset, (ii) evaluation and building of community capacity for CFE development, (iii) proper research on tensions and paradoxes with actionable solutions, and (iv) sectorial coordination for CFE development, support, and creation of CFE incubation centers

Vegetal non-timber forest products in Cameroon, contribution to the national economy

This paper analyses the contribution of some non-timber forest products (NTFPs) to the economy of Cameroon through the lens of livelihoods, food security, employment and financial values. Specifically, the work aims at determining the income generated from vegetal NTFPs sales, the value of self-consumption and the number of jobs provided, in order to assess the contribution of NTFPs to the national economy. A combination of literature review and in-depth data collated by CIFOR from households and markets for different periods corresponding to specific NTFP funded projects in Cameroon was used. The results show that NTFPs constitute a regular source of income (even though not the most important) for rural households due to their diversity. About 38% of vegetal NTFPs are used as food and the annual economic value for 16 of them is estimated at 32 billion XAF (64.7 million USD). Their value added is estimated at 6.4 billion XAF (13 million USD) representing 0.2% of the GDP of the country with at least 283,000 people involved

Famers’ satisfaction with group market arrangements as a measure of group market performance: A transaction cost analysis of Non Timber Forest Products’ producer groups in Cameroon

This paper evaluates the performance of Non Timber Forest Product (NTFP) group market initiatives by examining whether these groups meet the objectives for which they were created. Group marketing has often been cited as one way through which farmers can increase their access to markets by improving their negotiation/bargaining power and the competitiveness of their production as well as reduce transaction costs. However, these suppositions need to be verified especially as some of them are solely based on theory. This study uses data on producers' perceptions of expected benefits attainment through group sale initiatives to analyse the case of two NTFP producer groups in Cameroon. Results show that by joining groups, farmers can reduce some transaction costs while other costs may increase. Although overall negotiation power may increase following interventions from group activities, certain elements of negotiation are fundamental to success like bargaining better prices commensurate to efforts put in by members to meet quality standards set by traders. By using transaction cost theory, the study identifies certain elements hidden in the attributes of the transactions between producer groups and traders such as the nature of products and roads, or dispersed settlement of producers that may frustrate group market initiatives and may account for differences in performance between one group and anothe

Effect of COVID-19 on rural community enterprises: Case of community forest enterprises in Cameroon

The COVID-19 outbreak has been a big shock to the entire world. The global economic slowdown and loss of human life have been highlighted as immediate impacts of the virus. Rural forest communities and their enterprises have also been affected in different ways. This study seeks to extend the current understanding of the impacts of COVID-19 by evaluating how it has affected rural community forest enterprises (CFEs) in Cameroon. A sample of 13 CFEs makes up the study. Focus-group discussions with a well-structured interview guide were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics were used for analysis. The results reveal that CFEs dealing in perishable products suffered more from the effects of restrictive government measures to contain the virus than enterprises dealing in non-perishable products. Transport costs for most activities doubled for all enterprises; labour supply was reduced by 72.5% for CFEs dealing in perishable products and 50% for enterprises dealing with non-perishable products. The commercialization of CFEs’ products was also adversely affected: market prospects reduced by 100%; sale prices of products reduced by 57% for perishable products and by 60% for non-perishable products; and global commercialization costs increased by 100%, for all CFEs. With the virus outbreak, CFEs also were challenged engaging with their partners, especially donors, technical support organizations and the private sector. The study recommends exploiting value-addition options through the processing of perishable products to improve enterprise resilience to such exogenous shocks

Central Africa Humid Tropics Transect Sentinel Landscape (CAFHUT): A stocktaking pilot study

This publication is part of the Sentinel Landscape network initiative established in eight sites around the world representative of widely different biophysical and socioeconomic contexts. Here we present and summarize the results of the research and baseline studies carried out in the Central Africa Humid Tropics Transect sentinel landscape, four sites in Cameroon indicative of the African humid forest ecological zone