The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) has announced the launch of an important new methodology for measuring cocoa household income and living incomes. The development of this methodology was led and funded by WCF and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) in collaboration with the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) and the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa (SWISSCO). It was delivered by Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) with assistance in Côte d’Ivoire from the Centre Ivoirien de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (CIRES) and Etudes de Marché et Conseils (EMC)
Until now there has been no authoritative way to measure cocoa farmer household income across the sector, yet accurately measuring cocoa farmer household income is key to understanding the impact of sustainability interventions on cocoa farmer households and the environment. Existing methods struggle to account for the costs of cocoa production and to capture non-cocoa income whilst data gathered by individual companies offers a picture based solely on their direct supply chains – leaving cocoa growers in the indirect supply chain underrepresented. Individual data gathering by companies and other institutions also currently relies on a variety of different methods.