Highlights:

One of Fairtrade’s most prominent products is cocoa. Fairtrade is pushing the sector to address the many challenges that endanger the long-term sustainability of cocoa and the people behind it. Fairtrade certifies 272 producer organisations in Côte d’Ivoire, with 293,237 farmer members including 28,031 female producers. A central element of Fairtrade International’s strategic vision 2021-2025 is the ambition to see small-scale farmers earning a living income. This study touches upon different initiatives and investigates the progress that Fairtrade farmers have booked over the last years. The first goal of this study is to assess the situation of these cocoa farmers in 2020, in terms of individual farmer household incomes and the income distribution of cocoa farmers in 2020 as compared to 2018. The second goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Fairtrade Minimum Price (FMP) mechanism, a safety net for producers, which came into effect in the 2019/2020 harvest period.