Promoting living incomes in the cocoa sector: Policy options for consumer countries

The case for delivering living incomes in the cocoa sector has been made extensively by Fairtrade, amongst many others. A living income is a basic human right. It enables farmers to secure the basic necessities of life, and from there, to sustain production in harmony with the natural environment and address systemic problems such as child labour, deforestation and others. Delivering living incomes in practice, however, is a complex undertaking. This paper outlines a range of possible public policy measures that consumer-country governments – chiefly the European Union and its member states – could take to contribute to living incomes in the two main cocoa-producing countries, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire.