Smallholder participation and procedural compliance with sustainable cocoa certification programs

Third-party certification programs promise to improve livelihoods and promote sustainable production, yet achieving such goals rests on certification programs working well with smallholder producers. However, little is known about how these programs work in practice from the perspective of smallholder cocoa producers. Furthermore, we do not know if third-party cocoa certification programs work the same way, even within common countries/contexts. Therefore, we examine three different smallholder cocoa certification schemes operating in Ghana to understand how smallholder cocoa farmers perceive the certification program requirements, price premium arrangements, and inspection regimes, among other things. While we find that smallholder cocoa farmers/stakeholders have a positive view of certification programs and their requirements, the results reveal that smallholder cocoa farmers are inadequately informed about the certification programs, disconnected from price premium management, and not participating in the compliance verification regimes required by the various standards. Our findings suggest improvements to the structures and procedures for certification participation, price premium management, and smallholder-level verification may increase the likelihood that third-party certification schemes sustainably improve livelihoods and agroecological systems.