Why Farmers, Not Industry, Must Decide the Future of Cocoa (commentary)
While cocoa has provided a critical source of revenue for smallholder farmers and governments in West Africa, cocoa growing communities have also suffered from years of predatory market practices, declining commodity prices, and unfair terms of trade.
These perverse market dynamics – coupled with things such as conflicting agriculture and forestry policies, onerous land and tree tenure laws that penalize farmers, and low productivity by poor farm management practices – have contributed to severe problems in the cocoa sector.