Rewiring the Supply Chain: Turning Forest Protection and Traceability into Value for Farmers

For millions of smallholder farmers, particularly across Africa, that transition can mean new mapping requirements, data collection, traceability systems, and changes in production practices. If deforestation-free trade is treated primarily as another condition for accessing global markets, there is a real risk that the costs of sustainability are pushed down the supply chain to farmers and producing countries. But there is another possibility. What if the same systems being built to demonstrate compliance could also create value for the people protecting forests? This working session will explore how traceability and environmental data could become a foundation for new benefits, from better access to finance and insurance to differentiated markets, farmer incentives, ecosystem-service payments, and investment in agroforestry and restoration. It will also confront the question underneath all of these mechanisms: who should pay for the transition? Using the cocoa sector in Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea as a practical starting point, participants will examine the responsibilities of producing-country governments, consumer markets such as the European Union, commodity buyers, financial institutions, climate finance, and philanthropy. Just as importantly, the conversation will ask who owns the data being generated, who captures the value it creates, and what incentives actually reach farmers and communities. The goal is to move beyond a model built around compliance and toward one in which deforestation-free trade can be simultaneously forest-positive, farmer-positive, and socially inclusive. What to expect A highly interactive working session built around different perspectives from across the cocoa and forest value chain. Representatives from producing countries will begin by answering one question: if deforestation-free trade is going to work for farmers in your country, what has to change? Other participants will respond, surfacing where perspectives on financing, incentives, data, and responsibility converge or conflict. Participants will then take part in “The $100 Question.” Given a hypothetical $100 to finance the transition, how much would you allocate to farmer income and incentives, traceability and measurement, agroforestry and restoration, community infrastructure, finance and insurance, or government capacity? The results will become the basis for a wider conversation about who pays, what gets prioritized, and whether those choices would actually change outcomes for farmers and forests. Who this is for This session is for farmers and producer organizations, African governments, commodity buyers, climate and forest funders, financial institutions, philanthropies, policymakers, researchers, civil society organizations, and development partners working on deforestation-free supply chains, sustainable agriculture, forest protection, and smallholder livelihoods. What you will get out of it Perspectives from producing countries on what deforestation-free trade needs to deliver for farmers A clearer understanding of who currently bears the costs of traceability and forest protection and who captures the benefits Practical ideas for using traceability and environmental data to unlock finance, insurance, market incentives, and ecosystem-service payments A chance to interrogate how the costs of the transition should be shared among governments, buyers, consumer markets, climate finance, and philanthropy Principles for designing supply chains that create value for farmers and communities while protecting forests Hosted by Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT Landscape Alliance Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)