Inclusive Chocolate: Towards more integrated certification of Tropical Commodities

Tags: Worldwide , Small Producers Agency

In the 17^th century, Dutch companies introduced Europe to the global trade and processing of cacao, coffee and tea. Four centuries later, the Dutch food industry proclaimed that all the cacao it processes will be sustainable in 2025. This implies that the whole cacao value chain, from producer to supermarket, will have to be fully certified. The question arises what objectives should be met, e.g. ecological sustainability, poverty reduction or fairness in trade. Various standards organisations claim that their standards systems provide guidance to achieve such objectives. Comparison of standards systems, however, shows that each has specific strengths and weaknesses and that none addresses all issues. At the same time, consumers and producers are becoming more confused because of the wide array of different standards. Therefore, a cooperation between standard bodies was strongly recommended during a discussion organised at the Dutch Ministry of Development Cooperation in February 2010.

The meeting was organised to launch the book “Inclusive Improvement; Standards and Smallholders”, written by Coen van Beuningen (Hivos) and Peter Knorringa (ISS-Erasmus University). Robert-Jan Scheer from the Ministry chaired the meeting and the first author together with Barbel Weiligmann of the Tropical Commodity Coalition (TCC) presented the book. This was followed by a discussion on the conclusions with representatives of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture, the Dutch Organization for Standardization (NEN) and the Dutch organization for Sustainable Trade (IDH). The poster and presentation can be downloaded here Incl Improv presentation 002(2), poster standards and you can click here to download the book.

The first major conclusion was that certifying bodies should aim at a greater unity of certification systems, as mentioned already. Concurrently, terminologies need to be clarified and unified. Communication among the different parties in the value chain requires more transparency, simplification and clear definitions, preferably based on the widely acknowledged terminology used by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The glossary in appendix 1 of the book can be helpful for this issue, as will be further discussions with NEN. Also the terminology used in the ISO 31000 standards on risk management should be considered.

Finally during the meeting, it was concluded that fully certified commodity chains require coherent training and that an intensive effort of capacity building, down to the farm level, is needed in order to achieve this goal in the cacao chain. Also here, collaboration between certifying bodies is essential, especially within the producing countries.

All these points have been included in a declaration of intention, signed between the major parties at the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture on March 4, 2010. The points are also incorporated in a cocoa project initiated by GTZ and IDH in West-Africa, that potentially involves millions of farmers. TCC and Hivos underline the importance of this initiative. They want to speed up the planning process, using the concept of “chain management” developed in the Inclusive Improvement book, and coordinating between GTZ, IDH, national reference groups and major commercial parties. The cacao process has now started. Coffee and tea will follow.