‘Uncertainty’ amid EUDR delay poses challenges for cocoa companies, farmers

It might not come as much of a surprise that Tony’s Chocolonely has expressed its support for the EU Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR). The Dutch chocolate maker is known as much for its emphasis on sustainable business practices as for the cartoonish labels that have enveloped its products since 2005. Tony’s even came out strongly against a delay in the EUDR rules designed to ensure that cocoa and six other commodities entering the European Union don’t come at the cost of forests elsewhere.

What may be more surprising is that mainstream companies have also been pushing for the EUDR, which, whenever it becomes enforceable, will require an unprecedented level of monitoring and due diligence on supply chains for products entering the EU.

“Tony’s has been a very key part of this, but it wasn’t just the social enterprises,” Antonie Fountain, co-founder and managing director of the Voice of Organisations In Cocoa (VOICE), said in an interview. “The world’s largest food and beverage company is Nestlé, and they’ve been doing a lot of very publicly visible, proactive outreach on behalf of these regulations.”

VOICE is a cocoa watchdog group based in the Netherlands focused on advocacy and research. It’s the group behind the publication of the Cocoa Barometer, which aims to provide a “state of sustainability” in the sector every two years.

“This is the thing that really excites me about the cocoa sector,” Fountain said. And it’s among the most prepared to comply of all the commodities the EUDR will regulate, he added.

‘Systemic change’

Tony’s grew out of a journalist’s investigations in the early 2000s into a cocoa sector that he found rife with child labor and slavery. The company has since taken up ending deforestation and paying farmers living incomes among its “lonely” battles. In 2019, it started Tony’s Open Chain to help other businesses source cocoa more sustainably.

“This initiative is vital for driving systemic change across the cocoa industry,” Belinda Christine Borck, global public policy coordinator at Tony’s Chocolonely, told Mongabay in an email.

Two West African countries, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, account for more than 60% of the world’s cocoa production. Since 1950, Ghana has lost more than 65% of its forest cover, and Côte d’Ivoire has lost more than 90% as a result of cocoa, along with mining, logging and agriculture, according to a 2023 study in the journal Nature Food. Clearing in protected areas for cocoa farming alone has been responsible for a lot of the deforestation in those spots — more than a third in Côte d’Ivoire and 13% in Ghana, the study found.

And a 2022 report from the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog group Mighty Earth found that deforestation has surged in both countries recently. These spikes — of more than 230% between 2019 and 2022 in Côte d’Ivoire compared to rates between 2001 and 2017 — occurred despite the Cocoa and Forests Initiative signed by leaders of the two countries and chocolate companies with the express aim of stopping deforestation and increasing reforestation.

Those statistics are why advocates like Fountain say compulsory solutions to protect forests such as the EUDR are so vital.

“We desperately need these tropical forests, and we need them to stay there because they filter the carbon out of the sky,” he said. “If we cut them down, we actually emit far more carbon into the atmosphere as well.”

But forest loss isn’t something that a single company can tackle, and that’s where the EUDR comes in.

“Tony’s views the EUDR as a critical step in minimizing deforestation linked to cocoa production and fostering fundamental industry change,” Borck said.

The EUDR is intended to end deforestation in the timber, palm oil, coffee, cattle, soybean, rubber and cocoa supply chains. Once it goes into force, it will preventing the entry into EU countries of any of those commodities produced on land that was deforested after Dec. 31, 2020. The regulation requires companies to take steps to ensure imported goods meet that standard, including making sure that products are traceable to geolocated plots of land where they originated, that they were produced legally in the country where they came from, and that they have a due diligence statement submitted by the company through the EUDR’s information system.

Though originally set to go into effect for large companies on Dec. 30, 2024, European leaders agreed to a delay of one year. By the EU’s own calculations, postponing application of the controls on imports by EUDR will cost the world 2,300 square kilometers (888 square miles) in lost forest — an area almost the size of Luxembourg.

For its part, Tony’s sources cocoa from farms that are “100% polygon-mapped,” according to Borck.

“This tool has been highly effective, enabling detailed supply chain visibility,” she added.

Polygon mapping begins with satellite data of the farms in question. But the process also entails using GPS on the ground to verify that the blocks exist as they appear on the images taken from space. The company also uses satellite mapping and processes known as deforestation reviews to assess the risk of deforestation. The software it uses, called BeanTracker, relies on open-source blockchain technology called Chainpoint to digitally tie collected data about the origins of the company’s cocoa.

‘An emergency brake on deforestation’

While Fountain said the cocoa sector is “probably the most ready” compared to the other commodities, it still faces challenges. Notably, many companies are struggling with the uncertainty around the EUDR. The delayed application is just the latest issue. But as the original commencement date loomed, the European Commission failed to release guidance for companies until early October, months after the originally anticipated date. According to industry sources, this tardiness made the delay a necessity.

“That kind of uncertainty is terrible for everyone,” Fountain said.

What’s more, it effectively punishes companies for being proactive and setting up systems to get sustainable cocoa going, he added.

“What did they do that investment for?” Fountain said. “Trading companies spent a lot of money paying for EUDR-compliant cocoa or coffee, paying premiums for the compliancy there. It’s coming to the market now, but it doesn’t have to.”

He added he understands that compliance presents hurdles, but working to solve big problems requires bold steps.

“We needed an emergency brake on deforestation in commodities,” Fountain said, “and an emergency brake seldom is subtle, right?”

On the supply side, the uncertainty has created a disincentive for cocoa farmers to participate in the established systems and cooperatives that the EUDR will eventually require, Fountain said. Around half of cocoa comes from indirect networks in which farmers aren’t affiliated with a cooperative and for which traceability is difficult if not impossible, he added. For example, the 2023 Nature Food study found that up to 40% of areas planted for cocoa in Ghana don’t make it into the official statistics. Now, they have more than another year to comply, and the record-high current cocoa prices have made it difficult for sustainability-compliant cooperatives to compete for their beans.

“The established systems cost a lot of time and effort, and often cooperatives don’t have the cash at hand to pay these high prices,” Fountain said. “So it’s much easier to just sell it to the bulk global market and throw it into an untraceable bin, because you’re going to get almost exactly the same amount of money without all the pesky questions asked.”

Borck has argued the delay will hurt farmers in the long run.

“The postponement of EUDR implementation could negatively affect smallholders because it delays the support and structural changes needed to combat climate change impacts and deforestation,” she told Mongabay. Economists blame drought and heat in Côte d’Ivoire for the dearth of West African beans coming to market, which in turn has sent prices skyrocketing.

An African sustainability initiative

The two biggest cocoa-producing countries have already begun to address the question of how best to support farmers in the transition to sustainability. Separate from, and prior to, the EUDR, the intergovernmental African Regional Organisation for Standardisation has developed a set of sustainability guidelines known as the African Regional Standard for Sustainable Cocoa (ARS-1000), designed to address economic and social issues, as well as deforestation. Though the regulations in ARS-1000 are different from those laid out in the EUDR — products aren’t eligible for certification if they were produced on land deforested after June 2021, not December 2020 as with the EUDR, for example — the ARS guidelines represent an effort by African countries to “not leave the sustainable issue to European or Western countries,” said Chloé Tankam, an economist currently based in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, with the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), a French government-funded institution.

“ARS-1000 is a truly African framework,” Mawuli Coffie, Ghana country director for the World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), said in a statement. The WCF is a U.S.-based nonprofit that represents a global membership comprising cocoa cooperatives, traders, manufacturers and processors. “It was conceived by African governments to help drive modernisation across the cocoa sector and agriculture more broadly.”

The IDH, a sustainability organization, notes that ARS principles are “strongly embedded in national policies.” Additionally, certification through ARS-1000 based on its tracking requirements could serve as an EU importing company’s deforestation risk assessment as required by Article 10 of the EUDR, the IDH reported.

Observers say the ARS also includes aims to bolster the capabilities of West African cocoa farmers.

“This is a fantastic opportunity even if it will be challenging. Farmers and farmer groups will reach a new level of professionalisation in West Africa and move from non-formal operations to formal ones,” said Youssouf N’djoré, Côte d’Ivoire country director for the WCF, said in the WCF statement. “It will be a key tool to enhance sustainability in cocoa production by strengthening farmers’ skills and practices.”

Many hope the EUDR will also bring a stronger focus on the contributions of farmers and how they’re paid, Tankam said.

Some civil society organizations in West Africa, for example, support the EUDR to bolster “a more traceable value chain,” leading to fairer compensation for smallholders, she added. “Cocoa supply chains here are not organized in way that farmers get the money they deserve, and we still don’t know who will pay the costs of EUDR compliance.”

Tankam recently co-authored research published in the journal People and Nature examining the motivations of cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, specifically with respect to their attitudes toward agroforestry practices. The work, led by doctoral student Marie Dago at the Institut National Polytechnique Félix INPHB in Côte d’Ivoire, showed that while farmers’ motivations were often financial — in some cases, they clear existing trees in fields to make more room for high-yield cacao, for example — that wasn’t always the case. They might also value non-cacao trees for their cultural, aesthetic or medicinal values, for instance.

To produce cocoa sustainably, Tankam said, “We have to deal with this complexity.”

Still, the economics are a big piece of the puzzle for farmers and could influence the success of efforts like the EUDR. She noted the importance of including farmers in supply chains so that they reap the full benefits of their labor.

“We should address the question of how is it possible for producers to have such small part of the added value of the products? I think that’s the question,” Tankam added. “Deforestation, it’s important. Degradation, it’s important. Child labor, it’s important, of course. But the capacity of the farmers to benefit from their work — it’s just fundamental. It is one condition of sustainability.”

Banner image: Image courtesy of the World Cocoa Foundation.

John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Bluesky.

Citations:

Dago, M. R., Zo‐Bi, I. C., Konan, I. K., Kouassi, A. K., Guei, S., Jagoret, P., … Hérault, B. (2024). What motivates west African cocoa farmers to value trees? Taking the 4W approach to the heart of the field. People and Nature. doi:10.1002/pan3.10754

Kalischek, N., Lang, N., Renier, C., Daudt, R. C., Addoah, T., Thompson, W., … Wegner, J. D. (2023). Cocoa plantations are associated with deforestation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Nature Food, 4(5), 384-393. doi:10.1038/s43016-023-00751-8

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