Useless certifications? Asymmetric relationships between cooperatives, standards, and cocoa smallholders in Côte d’Ivoire

Des certifications inutiles ? Les relations asymétriques entre coopératives, labels et cacaoculteurs en Côte d'Ivoire

François Ruf (), Enrique Uribe Leitz (), Casimir Gboko and Aurélie Carimentrand ()
Additional contact information
François Ruf: UMR ART-Dev - Acteurs, Ressources et Territoires dans le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - UPVM - Université Paul-Valéry - Montpellier 3 - UPVD - Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - UM - Université de Montpellier - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Enrique Uribe Leitz: WUR - Wageningen University and Research [Wageningen]
Casimir Gboko: UMR Innovation - Innovation et Développement dans l'Agriculture et l'Alimentation - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier
Aurélie Carimentrand: UMR Innovation - Innovation et Développement dans l'Agriculture et l'Alimentation - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Montpellier SupAgro - Centre international d'études supérieures en sciences agronomiques - Montpellier SupAgro - Institut national d’études supérieures agronomiques de Montpellier

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Certification schemes, including Fairtrade, rely on small-scale cooperatives and "committed" partnerships to promote sustainable livelihoods. The cocoa sector in Côte d'Ivoire has been marked by the impoverishment of farmers, who distrust cooperatives. The expected benefits of certifications, including the Fairtrade one, appear to be low. The aim of this article is to open the "black box" of 80 cooperatives: the composition of their management teams, their education level, and the management of premiums. The majority of cooperatives result in fact simply from the "conversion" of pre-existing private trading companies into cooperatives. Hence, no real collective identity or cooperative values are shared. The conditions for the collective, democratic management of the profits derived from so-called sustainability standards are not met at the level of the cooperative. Therefore, the credibility of those standards is undermined.

Keywords: Relation coopérative-multinationale; Côte d'Ivoire; certification; label de qualité; coopérative agricole; coopérative de producteurs; agriculteur; prix minimum; Relation coopérative-adhérent; Filière; Certification; Prix minimum garanti; Confiance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Revue internationale des études du développement, 2019, 240 (4), pp.31-61. ⟨10.3917/ried.240.0031⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05174921

DOI: 10.3917/ried.240.0031

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().