Sustainability for Whom? Why Cocoa’s Green and Ethical Systems Still Leave Farmers Exposed

The sustainability machinery around cocoa keeps expanding. But when the system comes under stress, the farmer still seems to be the easiest place to deposit the pain.

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Last week, I brought the cocoa crisis into the household. I argued that once beans stop moving and payments stop arriving, the real crisis is no longer in the warehouse or the policy memo. It is in the kitchen, the classroom, the clinic, and the home. Cocoa sitting unsold in storage may still look like value from the outside, but from the farmer’s side, it can mean stalled livelihood, delayed school fees, postponed treatment, unpaid labour, and growing household strain. Reuters reported stock build-up in Côte d’Ivoire as exporters resisted the official price, while the Associated Press showed how the broader cocoa crash has pushed some farmers toward alternative and even destructive livelihoods just to survive.

This week, I want us to look at one of the most celebrated words in the cocoa and chocolate world: “Sustainability”. It is now everywhere. It appears in annual reports, chocolate packaging, company missions, trade conferences, donor programmes, certification systems, satellite dashboards, climate strategies, and policy partnerships. It is a word that sounds unquestionably good. Who could be against sustainability? But that is exactly why it must be examined carefully. You remember the adage

“The one whom you have been socialised not to criticise, runs your life”.

Because in cocoa, “sustainability” has become so large, so respectable, and so professionally organised that people rarely stop to ask a very basic question: sustainability for whom?

One of the most striking features of the cocoa sector today is that the machinery around sustainability keeps growing, even while the farmer remains exposed. More “experts” are hired. More projects are launched. More metrics are developed. More traceability systems are rolled out. More geolocation requirements are introduced. More programmes are designed to show that the sector is changing. Yet when a crisis enters the system, the farmer still seems to be the easiest place to deposit the shock. Yes, the Payments will be delayed, Prices fall, the stock will sit, and the households will tighten. If that is still the pattern, then we have to ask what exactly this expanding sustainability architecture is sustaining.

This is not a new concern for me. I raised part of it in “Traceability or Trail of Ambiguities”, where I asked who traceability is really for. Is it primarily for the farmer, or is it for brands, regulators, and consumers who want cleaner visibility into a messy supply chain? That question has become even more urgent now, because cocoa sustainability has increasingly moved from broad moral language into hard compliance systems. The European Union’s deforestation rules require cocoa entering the European market to be traceable to farm plots and proven not to come from land deforested after the cut-off date. (Europa.eu) On paper, this sounds like progress. And in some ways it is. Forest destruction linked to cocoa should absolutely be confronted. But the deeper question remains. When these systems become more demanding, more expensive, and more technical, who do they truly protect first?

We should be honest. Much of the current sustainability architecture in cocoa is designed to reduce risk for actors higher up the chain. It helps companies protect market access. It helps brands defend their reputations. It helps regulators enforce standards. It helps buyers document compliance. It helps sustainability teams demonstrate progress. It helps investors and consumers feel that something measurable is happening. All of this may still matter. But it does not automatically mean the farmer’s life is becoming safer, more secure, or more just. The farmer may become more visible in the data without becoming more protected in reality.

That is the contradiction at the heart of the current moment. The sector can tell you more than ever about where cocoa comes from, yet still fails to guarantee timely payment to the person growing it. It can map farms to precise coordinates, yet still leave farm households vulnerable to hunger when prices fall or buying stalls. It can produce climate strategies, child-labour protocols, and forest-monitoring platforms, yet still leave the farmer carrying the final burden when the system comes under stress. If that is what sustainability looks like in practice, then we have to ask whether the concept has been captured by the needs of the chain rather than the needs of the grower.

This is one reason I have become increasingly uneasy with the professional expansion around cocoa sustainability. There is now an entire workforce growing around the farmer. Project officers, auditors, consultants, ESG teams, traceability specialists, satellite analysts, compliance managers, community-liaison officers, monitoring and evaluation staff, impact specialists, reporting teams, donor coordinators, commodity exchanges and sustainability strategists. Again, I am not saying all this work is useless. Some of it is necessary. Some of it is well-intentioned. Some of it has real value. But the question is whether the growth of this workforce is translating into a stronger financial and social position for the farmer himself. Too often, the answer is uncomfortable. Sustainability grows around the farmer as a profession long before it transforms the farmer’s actual bargaining power or income security.

That is why I wrote recently about the “sustainability workforce” boom. The farmer can become the reason budgets are written without becoming the person who benefits most from them. The farmer becomes the subject of interventions, pilots, compliance systems, and impact frameworks, but still is not the first person protected when money is tight. This is a pattern we should name clearly. There is a difference between a sector that works on farmers and a sector that works for farmers. Cocoa sustainability has become highly skilled at first. It is still far less convincing on the second.