Traceability of commodity supplies has become the foundation for food companies’ sustainability strategies. Traceability provides transparency and accountability to all actors along the supply chain, thereby providing incentives for actors in the supply chain to “do the right thing”. SWISSCO member companies are committed to promoting and gradually enhancing “first-mile traceability” as a means to identify levers for development opportunities for cocoa farmers and consumers’ confidence.
The reasons for pursuing product traceability can vary depending on the different actors in a value chain and their respective roles. Companies, consumers, civil society organisations and government authorities might all be in favour of enhancing traceability, but with different motivations: to improve the supply chain management, to better mitigate risks in safety, quality and sustainability of production, to track payments to farmers, to ensure compliance with sector policies and sustainability requirements, to improve the living condition of farmers, to be assured of the safety and/or sustainability of the product etc.
But what is in it for the most upstream and often most vulnerable stakeholder in the cocoa value chain, the cocoa farmer? What is a farmer’s motivation to favour more traceability? How can the information and data collected in the process to enhance traceability be used to benefit the farmer, and improve farmers’ and their families’ lives?
Those questions motivated conducting an event on traceability and transparency in the cocoa value chain, amongst SWISSCO members on May 24, 2022 in Zurich. In preparation for the event, Gabriella Crescini conducted interviews with several SWISSCO members, representing different actors along the value chain. The goal of these exchanges was to collect the different viewpoints and identify the individual and common constraints and opportunities that the collection of data for traceability creates along the value chain and thus where the contributors see the main leavers for action.
A concise report summarizes the aggregated key findings of the interviews and the event (access the report by clicking here). To illustrate actions already taken by some actors to improve data collection and thus traceability and their benefits for farmers and their families, mini cases were compiled that can be found here. The cases are formulated in the providers’ own words.
We would like to thank everyone who attended the event yesterday and enriched the discussions with their contributions. And a special thanks to Gabriella Crescini for preparing and moderating the event and Swisscontact for all the organizational support. We are looking forward to many more fruitful exchanges with and between our members to jointly work on making all cocoa products fully traceable in order to be able to tackle the root causes of many of the challenges in the cocoa sector.