Chocola, duurzaamheidsschema's en kleinschaligheid

The Economist had dit weekend een mooi verhaal over de cacao teelt in West-Afrika en duurzaamheidsschema's (waarom Nestlé boeren betaalt om kippen te houden - hulp bij voedselzekerheid voor de telers). Dat alles onder de titel Chocolate wars. Een passage over het echte probleem is te mooi om niet hier even vast te leggen:  

Such programmes make for good press releases, but do not get to grips with the scale of the problem. Nestlé’s project has 10,000 farmers and it plans to expand to 160,000 globally by 2030. Yet Alex Assanvo, the head of copec’s secretariat, claims such programmes reach a mere 15% of its farmers. (Other estimates are higher.) “Sustainability programmes cannot be the answer,” says Francesca Di Mauro, the European Union ambassador in Ivory Coast, “they’re welcome, but they’re not systemic.”

The grim truth is that small farmers will never grow rich selling unprocessed beans. In most countries where rural folk have dramatically improved their lives, they have done so by moving to cities and finding better-paid jobs there. Encouraging them to remain in the countryside and grow more cocoa than people want to eat is an unlikely path to prosperity.

Ivory Coast is hoping to move up the chocolate value chain. It is now one of the world’s two largest cocoa grinders (the other is the Netherlands). Yet grinding adds only a little of the value in a bar of chocolate. And in any case, there is little reason to think that because the country is good for growing cocoa it is also going to be better at making chocolate than, say, Belgium (which grows none). In focusing so doggedly on cocoa, Ivorians may be overlooking other industries where its firms and people might be more competitive.

Farms can generate wealth, but they typically do so by becoming bigger, more efficient and more mechanised. This means having fewer farmers.