The Visibility of Cocoa Farmer Living Income in Central Sulawesi

Palu, April 05, 2023—CSP had initiated a Living Income Visibility and Equality Study in partnership with Swisscontact, Rikolto Indonesia, GIZ Indonesia, PISAgro, Social Accountability International (SAI), and the Anker Research Institute (ARI).

The scoping activity to populate the samples in certain areas of Central Sulawesi Province. The selected areas were the large concentrations of cocoa production and smallholders are located. The activity also studied the roles of household members, such as wife or husband and children, in some cocoa on and off-farms activities, including the financial management, decision-making, and task sharing.

In order to distribute the results and recommendations of the series of activities, CSP with the supports of GIZ Indonesia, Swisscontact, and Rikolto Indonesia, initiates the workshop of Living Income Visibility and Equality for Cocoa Smallholder Farmers in Central Sulawesi in Palu, April 05, 2023.

The workshop which is attended by the stakeholder representatives of cocoa sector in the area, including the members of CSP and both of national and regional governments, invites Azfar Khan of Anker Research Institute, and Nina Bellini Motovska and Yuca Waarts of Wageningen University and Research.

In his presentation, Asfar Khan mentions that According to the findings of this study, a sustainable standard of living for farmers requires an annual income of approximately Rp. 5,589,044. As Nina Bellini Motovska and Yuca Waarts who conduct study on cocoa farmer actual income in several areas of Indonesia delivers that One of the findings of this study is that households with less than a hectare of land tends to be more vulnerable. And these households will experience more obstacles in meeting a decent standard of livelihood income. The similarities we have seen so far are that most of the households we interviewed, mainly in West Sulawesi, depend on cocoa in particular, and the only difference is that the size of the farms varies. About 5% of the respondents own two hectares or more of land. The rest are farmers with less than two hectares of land, and most farmers in West Sulawesi cultivate an average of one hectare of land, or about 1.03 hectares.