Under the mango tree: Looking back at the World Food System Summer School 2018

The gathering under the mango tree was to discuss the challenges facing smallholder yam farmers in the region. Although the country is better known as one of the largest producers of cocoa in the world, it is yam that is king in these parts. In fact, the word for “food” is the same as the word for “yam” in the Baoule language. Through the intense and sometimes heated dialogue between students and villagers, we learnt that despite the importance of yam for food security, it is considered a “neglected crop”. This is because there has been so little investment in improving its cultivation and there is none of the government support available for other crops like rice and maize. This has led to increasing challenges with soil fertility and declining yields, against a backdrop of climate change, unclear and variable land tenure and limited infrastructure leading to lack of access to markets and food losses. These are just some of the challenges researchers and farmers are collaborating to solve, through improved varieties, locally adapted storage facilities, managing organic matter for improved soil fertility and innovation platforms for better knowledge sharing and implementation across value chain actors.

We then went to an attieke business (attieke is a side dish made from cassava found in Ivorian cuisine) that was founded by a female entrepreneur and employed all women. For our final visit of the day we met with rice farmers and learned about the challenges they face with encroachment of urban areas into agricultural land, and the relatively high cost of producing rice in the country compared to the cheap imports also on the market. After time in the field the students returned to the classroom to digest what they had learned and experienced, making links to theory they had been exposed to earlier as they developed their own solution approaches through a design thinking process.

The two-week program in Côte d’Ivoire included a mixture of theoretical inputs, participant led discussions, peer to peer learning, field work, case study work, design thinking approaches and simulation games. A diverse range of faculty contributed inputs from different disciplines and sectors to add to the rich learning experience. The participants live and work together during the intensive program to get a broad overview of the challenges facing food systems globally, as well as more specifically in the region, and to start to explore solution approaches in a complex food system.

At the end of the course, we spent several days diving into the cacao value chain and understanding the challenges and opportunities facing this cash crop and those involved in its production. For many of the participants, after years of eating chocolate, it was their first chance to see how cacao grows and learn about the serious complexities involved in growing and transforming the bean into the indulgence products enjoyed around the world.

To start with, farmers and laborers in cocoa production earn less than $1 per day, which is below the poverty line in the country. This is linked to the currently low prices farmers are receiving for the cocoa beans, despite years of concern about supply shortfalls and demand increases, which did not eventuate.  Not surprisingly, this is leading farmers to switch to other crops and making it hard to attract workers given the difficult work and low wages. Many locals would prefer to work in plantations for bananas or palm oil, and this leads to a reliance on migrant labor, and concerns regarding the use of child labor, from neighboring countries where extreme poverty and food insecurity leave people desperate for opportunities to improve their livelihoods. On top of this, farmers spoke about the concerns they have regarding climate change, crop viruses and diseases, ageing plants and low yields. Overall, the picture that cocoa workers presented was multilayered and fraught with challenges.

We were inspired to see a number of locally developed initiatives to tackle some of these issues. For example, a fair trade and organic cooperatives that brought together farmers in a collective in order to access the price premium offered through these certification systems. This set up was only possible through a direct relationship with buyers and NGO’s who supported the certification process and fees, guaranteed a minimum volume of purchase and provided training to manage the huge record keeping requirements of certification. The group had also been able to participate in an exchange with organic growers from Ecuador to learn from each other about composting, agroforestry and natural pest management techniques. This was important knowledge exchange, as other farmers in the area had dropped out of organic certification due to the serious insect pressure on their crops.

The cooperative Ecoya also provide an interesting example of a way to manage the cocoa value chain differently. Besides setting up growers cooperatives to better organize farmers, the cooperative is pioneering local processing and value adding of the cocoa beans through a female producers cooperative. Although still in the pilot phase, the organization has the ambitious goal of training 25k women in Côte d’Ivoire to process chocolate all the way from the pods to chocolate bars for local marketing and sale. The focus on women was an inspiring angle to this organization, given that owning agricultural land is possible under modern land tenure agreements but not under traditional laws, which still exist simultaneously. Value adding through processing on site seemed to be a welcome addition to livelihood opportunities for women in the area, and at present, demand far exceeds supply, indicating that there is a strong desire for ethically produced cocoa.

Exploring the two value chains of yams and cocoa allowed us to get an insight not only into the challenges facing food production in the country, but also food consumption and how that links to nutrition and health. Côte d’Ivoire, similar to many countries in the African continent, is facing a nutrition transition where there is simultaneously a portion of the population suffering from hunger and malnutrition, while other groups increasingly suffering from the burden of overweight and obesity.  These phenomena are all linked to how and what type of food people can access and to changes in what and how food is being grown. They can only be addressed when we find ways to tackle inequality not only in terms of income but also in terms of access to a nutritious and diverse diet. These inequalities were particularly stark when looking at the cocoa value chain, knowing that a luxury indulgence product for urban consumers was linked with poverty and food insecurity for farmers and laborers.

The participants wrapped up the two weeks by trying to identify appropriate solutions to some of these challenges. They used a combined method of complex systems and design thinking approaches to come up with new ideas for how to tackle soil infertility through a social franchise model for composting, production challenges through a radio show, and locally designed storage solutions to reduce post-harvest losses.