Yale Food Systems Symposium

CocoaCompassion:  A Cacao-Centric Movement Honing in On Curiosity, Culture, Experimentation, Empowerment and Dialogue
Joy Thaler, CocoaCompassion®

Globally, chocolate is a $100 billion industry that is recession-proof.  The world has an obsession with chocolate and cocoa-based products. The demand for chocolate is growing exponentially across the growing middle class in emerging markets that have more disposable income and are spending it on non-essentials such as confectionery.   So what could be the problem?  There are many, but for our purposes we will focus on a three big disconnects (1) Consumers are unaware of where cacao comes from (2) 70% of the world’s cocoa is produced by 5 million small producers who are living on less than $2 per day, and (3) most cacao-based product is not manufactured at origin, but by industrial chocolate processors throughout the US & UK who realize the majority of revenue.  The commodity cocoa system is broken: while demand for cocoa is growing, farmer incomes aren't and supply is declining. Certifications are not the answer because the cost of production is not covered in the farm gate price nor does it incentivize farmers to improve yields or quality. Cocoa farmers are locked in a cycle of poverty. Farmers take the most risk for the least income. In response to these obstacles, a movement is in motion and many cacao-focused business have emerged.

CocoaCompassion® considers itself a seedling. We are a social enterprise at the idea and proof-of-concept stage. Based upon the diverse skill sets of our Advisory Board, passion for bottom-up development, extensive secondary research and direct experience in the field, we believe that to change the story at origin, we need to change the story in the states, and that local, vertical integration is critical to our model.  Our goals are to inform the market of the larger value beyond quality, provide smallholder cacao farmers with market access, and live our tag line, “Giving Back with Every Bite.” To accomplish these goals we intersect with conscious consumers, collaborate with chefs, corporations and academic institutions and provide the farmers with compassionate pruning support. Our mode of interaction is edutainment-based; chocolate will be positioned as a carrier for exploration and discovery of cultures and traditions, and as a carrier to connectivity across friends, family, colleagues and community. Our business aligns with the most critical trends, including the growing customer base that is placing pressure on industrial food systems and demanding more knowledge and transparency; morally conscious consumption over indulgence; modern dishes that reconnect with native ingredients to celebrate food; and, ethnic food demand and sales being driven by the growing diverse population. To date, 20% of the proceeds from the sale of the first 1,000 CocoaCompassion® & Raaka partnership bars, totaling $1,600, has been given back to the Mayan smallholder cacao farmers in Belize and will be used towards tools that will be placed in five community tool banks. 

 

Sulawesi’s Emerging Cocoa Sustainability Complex: Where public-private aspirations meet social and natural evasions
Lisa Kelley, University of California Berkeley 

Up from only 1 in 1984, there are now 55 public-private partnerships focused on achieving economic and environmental sustainability in the cacao sector. Propelled by purported “supply deficit” in the sector, the intensification of smallholder cocoa fields and the establishment of direct trade relations between corporations and smallholders is central to a majority of these partnerships. Proponents suggest these movements can effect a win-win-win of corporate growth, domestic economic expansion and smallholder livelihood security, shoring faltering national cocoa economies and significantly improve the livelihood security of the estimated 5-6 million smallholder farmers that source 90% of all cacao globally. Detractors argue that that these are a “grab” for greater corporate control over smallholders’ fields and livelihoods, and will undermine rather than reinforce smallholder livelihood security over the long run. Both perspectives fail to locate such debates in actual landscapes, exploring people’s aspirations and agency with respect to such initiatives. This paper presents a case from Sulawesi, Indonesia drawing on over one year of ethnographic work in four villages as well as in-depth interviews along the conventional chocolate supply chain. I argue that while contemporary efforts to promote “sustainable chocolate” in Indonesia are most usefully read as grabs for greater corporate (and domestic) control over an increasingly contested supply of raw cacao, smallholder evasions make it unlikely this project of control will succeed. This agency is not synonymous with sovereignty. Despite smallholders capacity to speak through their actions, they have virtually no inclusion in the development of initiatives that purport to serve them.

 

Empowering farmers to produce quality food for a growing world
Maribel Lieberman, MarieBelle Chocolates 

Feeding a growing world: not just quantity but quality. Empowering farmers to give voice and respect to a category that is struggling to survive in an era where technology and large-scale productions are becoming more and more dominant

in the way we feed ourselves. It is said that we are what we eat. Nowadays more than ever we see consumers involved in finding out where the food they buy comes from and how it was made. Almost everything we eat should be primary foods like bread, meat, dairy or staple commodities such as chocolate, tea, coffee they all have a human story behind them. Hundreds of people around the world are involved in food production yet most of them struggle to survive or live at poverty levels. I am going to discuss different ways governments and other organizations can help farmers around the world to feed a growing population providing not just quantity but quality food.

Smallholder farmers and value chains in a changing climate
Gernot Laganda, Lead Technical Specialist for Climate Change at the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and 2016 Greenberg World Fellow at Yale University

There are around 500 million smallholder farms in the world which provide livelihoods to over two billion people and account for up to 80% of food production in many developing countries. Smallholder farmers work on land plots which are often located in marginal, vulnerable settings. Many of these households are poor and food insecure and have limited access to markets and services. Their choices are constrained but they are a key economic factor in the developing world. The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and specialized UN agency which makes the case that smallholder farmers are small, climate-relevant businesses. Although many decisions affecting small farms are made in an economic environment in which markets do not function well, and which is subject to a diverse range of climatic, economic and political shocks, smallholder farmers can be empowered with access to weather information, adaptation technologies and risk financing to generate positive multiplier effects for the resilience of rural value chains, landscapes and ecosystems. Building on experience from the worldwide largest climate change adaptation program for smallholder farmers - the Adaptation for Smallholder Agriculture Programme (ASAP) - IFAD is working with a twin-track investment model which on the one hand supports smallholders in the commercialization of goods and services, enabling their transformation into viable economic units; and on the other hand promotes adaptation to climate change and the dispersion of low-carbon technologies in rural value chains.