2027 Partnership Meeting From Origin to Global Resilience

Field visits complement the 2027 WCF Partnership Meeting theme, From Origin to Global Resilience, by providing participants with a direct view of the people, institutions and innovations shaping the future of cocoa in Ghana. Through these experiences, attendees can deepen their understanding of the opportunities and challenges facing the sector and strengthen connections with stakeholders at origin.

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This Fireside chat will commence our discussion of “From Origin to Global Resilience,” and what it truly means for the cocoa sector with representatives of ICCO, COCOBOD & CCC. This session will provide a rare and intimate dialogue with senior government officials as they share perspectives on their national strategies, bilateral cooperation, and vision for cocoa’s future.

Cocoa Swollen Shoot Virus remains the most destructive disease facing West African cocoa. For decades the response centred on cutting out infected trees and replanting, an approach farmers have long resisted, often choosing to keep diseased trees producing a few pods rather than lose their income and their inheritance. A new consensus is now taking shape. Championed by WCF and partners, it shifts the emphasis towards early detection, prevention through disease-resistant planting material, and structured rehabilitation, offering a model that protects both the crop and the farmer. This session brings together farmer representatives, social scientists and leading CSSV researchers from Ghana and beyond to examine what this integrated approach requires in practice: reliable diagnostics and early warning, resistant varieties that farmers will actually adopt, fair support through the replanting gap, and the coordinated regional research and financing needed so that no single farmer, or single country, carries the cost alone.

Supply chain resilience in cocoa begins at origin—with farmers. As the sector confronts climate change, crop disease, ageing farms, rising production costs and increasing sustainability requirements, the long-term security of cocoa supply will depend on whether farming remains a viable and rewarding livelihood.

This session will explore how farmer income, productivity, access to finance and inputs, climate and disease resilience, and farm rehabilitation can strengthen the foundations of sustainable cocoa production. It will examine living income as a supply-chain resilience strategy and consider how sustainability standards, market incentives, innovative finance and public-private collaboration can better distribute value, risk and responsibility across the cocoa economy.

At its core, the session advances a simple proposition: resilient farmers are the foundation of credible, sustainable and resilient cocoa supply chains.

Climate pressure, price volatility, and tightening regulation (EUDR and beyond) are testing every link in the chain. This session brings origin, traceability, and farmer economics together to ask a practical question: what does a genuinely resilient value chain look like, and how do buyers secure supply without trading away sustainability?

Day 2 opens with a panel of international journalists who report on the cocoa sector. They will share their perspectives on the evolution of the sector during recent years, how they engage with the sector, and how they manage to distill into their reporting vast amounts of sometimes conflicting information.   

The goal of this panel is to present and share different models for improving cocoa production system and farmers profitability. It aims to show how profitability depends on productivity, the enabling environment and efficiency, and what are the solutions to ensure that profitability is reached. Topics discussed will include introducing mechanization and innovation to decrease production costs and increase farmers' capacity while decreasing the dependency on manual labour; present costs of production on different production systems and discuss what are the positives and negatives of impact; share solutions to provide technical assistance and credit as accelerators for reaching farmers profitability. The panel will look at different farm's sizes (small, medium and large) and analyse the risks and opportunities for each type. 

This session will bring together representatives from government, civil society, development organizations, and the private sector to explore the future of Ecuador’s cocoa sector. Panelists will discuss the country’s market outlook, policy environment, climate and forest risks, social sustainability priorities, and experiences implementing sustainability requirements and navigating global regulations. The session will highlight both the opportunities and challenges in strengthening a resilient and sustainable cocoa sector in Ecuador.

This interactive, discussion-led session examined how investments in traceability and climate resilience impact farmer livelihoods, sector competitiveness, and the stability of global cocoa supply chains. Moving away from traditional presentations, the panel engaged in a candid debate regarding the balance of costs, responsibilities, and value distribution across the cocoa sector.

Drawing on recent work and the experience of experts from CIAT, EFI, Quantis, and WCF member companies, this discussion will explore promising interventions, opportunities and barriers to scaling them, emerging MRV and accounting approaches, the role of high-quality data, and practical implementation experiences across cocoa supply chains.

Nigeria is seeking to become the most investable emerging cocoa origin in West Africa: a market where traceability reduces risk, sustainability strengthens competitiveness, farmer incomes improve through market access, and private capital can scale commercially viable cocoa supply systems. The country presentation will ask the question: What must Nigeria do differently over the next five years to become a resilient, traceable and investment-ready cocoa origin—and what should government, farmers and industry each invest in to make that transformation possible?

Global cocoa resilience ultimately depends on the strength of the systems at origin where cocoa is produced. Farmers face increasing pressure from climate change, disease, ageing farms, productivity constraints, rising production costs and evolving market and regulatory requirements. At the same time, governments and industry must balance farmer livelihoods, sustainability ambitions and the need for a reliable and competitive cocoa supply.

This plenary will explore how producers, enabling public policy and effective industry practice can work together to build resilience from origin. It will examine what needs to change at farm, policy and supply-chain levels to strengthen production systems, manage systemic risks and translate sustainability commitments into practical investments and outcomes at origin.