20. May 2024

The Cocoa Income Inventory (CII) has been officially launched!

Living income has been front and centre of cocoa sustainability discussions in the recent past and many stakeholders are collecting cocoa income data. However, the wider cocoa and chocolate industry does not regularly share data or insights into cocoa farming income levels in their value chains and there are data quality concerns due to a lack of harmonised methodology. But policymakers in producing and importing countries, industry partners and sustainability professionals in the cocoa sector urgently need reliable and up-to-date information about the key aspect that drives sustainability in the global cocoa sector.

The Cocoa Income Inventory (CII) was launched by IDH, Wageningen University & Research, Voice Network, KIT, Sustainable Food Lab, Agri-Logic, and Südwind Institut during the World Cocoa Conference 2024. It is a first step in making available publicly the vast amounts of income data that has been collected in the cocoa sector, as well as learn from the impact of different interventions to improve farmer incomes. Over 8 organisations including chocolate companies and NGOs contributed to the initial dataset of the CII, which included data from over 80,000 farmers in Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana and Cameroon. The aim of the CII is that this will lead to a robust, publicly available, and harmonised data and evidence sharing platform, which can be used to inform policy makers and industry partners in the cocoa sector and have sector-level learnings around the effectiveness of different living income interventions.

The Cocoa Income Inventory has two phases- the first phase is the synthesis of existing data and insights. In its second phase, the Cocoa Income Inventory aims to synthesise harmonised data from different stakeholders who have applied the Cocoa Household Income study approach. The Cocoa Household Income Study (CHIS) methodology offers step-by-step guidance on data collection and assessing the income of cocoa-producing households. In combination with the Cocoa Income Inventory, this method overcomes common limitations to data collection on cocoa household income and is expected to lead to greater alignment in data collection and sharing on living income parameters and insights on the impact of interventions.

Since the launch, the CII consortium is working on better understanding the current needs and gaps in the sector on data and learning, data governance, and coordinating with other initiatives in the sector like the CHIS methodology.


To learn more about the Cocoa Income Inventory or to contribute to this initiative, please contact  Pavithra Ram at IDH (ram(at)idhtrade.org), Yuca Waarts at WUR (yuca.waarts(at)wur.nl) and Antonie Fountain at the VOICE Network (antonie(at)voicenetwork.cc).