The cocoa industry has taken bold steps to preventing deforestation in the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI), a public private collaboration between 33 cocoa and chocolate companies (85% of the industry), the governments of Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, and led by the World Cocoa Foundation and the Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH). This effort is based…
The Living Income Community of Practice, of which the Food Lab is a founding partner, released a report on the Ghana Living Income Benchmark & Analysis of Income Gaps for Cocoa Growing Regions. The study outlines a roadmap to achieve living incomes for cocoa farmers through a credible, third party analysis. Follow these links to the…
In July, Stephanie Daniels, Senior Program Director of Agriculture and Development, facilitated a workshop with the leaders of Ghana’s cocoa sector and global chocolate industry on research to determine a Living Income Benchmark in cocoa growing regions of Ghana. The workshop was done in collaboration with the World Cocoa Foundation, GIZ and the Living Income Community…
Nutrition is increasingly being identified as a key challenge within sourcing communities and an area where companies and their implementing are focusing more time and resources to investigate the nutritional situation on the ground and provide services to improve nutritional diversity and food security. This work has been described as a “no regret” intervention. However,…
A cross-section of more than 50 people representing the Ghana cocoa sector came together March 9 in Accra to review the advances of the Climate Smart Value Chain project being implemented by CIAT, IITA, Rainforest Alliance, Root Capital and the Sustainable Food Lab. This workshop builds on a kick-off workshop held in May 2015, field visits and joint work combining soil mapping with climate…
Are your raw materials ‘climate smart’? A new Food Lab and CCAFS partnership tackles the challenge of scaling climate smart value chains. Since 2010, the Sustainable Food Lab has partnered with the University of Aberdeen, Unilever and many others to develop the Cool Farm Tool, an open source quantification tool for measuring GHG emissions in…
As multinational companies grow more sophisticated in understanding their supply chains, the research community is also getting better at modeling and predicting future weather patterns, diseases, water availability and other climate change impacts. The question is, how well are these sectors supporting and feeding each other? Is the science on shifting crop suitability reaching the…
This session offered leading examples of structural mechanisms to incentivize Climate Smart Agriculture being done by Hivos, Rainforest Alliance and CEPICAFE. We looked at projects in Peru, Nicaragua, and Ghana using carbon credits and other incentives for afforestation, restoration of degraded land and cropland diversification. HIVOS, CEPICAFE, CIAT, Rainforest Alliance. Click on images to view…