Sustainable Cocoa Value Chain

Abstract

In the last decades, the focus of studies on cocoa value chain (CVC) has changed from the low income of farmers and the shortcomings of the educational and financial systems to the incorporation of innovations, supported on sustainability principles. However, classical theories based on economics are insufficient to understand sustainability phenomenon, and the investigation in the field is still dispersed. This study represents one first attempt to synthesize findings on the topic, in line with the triple bottom line (TBL) scenarios. TBL provides a useful framework to understand the social, economic, and environmental aspects along the CVC. This chapter performs a systematic literature review on sustainability scenarios applied to CVC, each one representing one of the three dimensions of sustainability. At the final, an agenda for future research on the topic is suggested, uncovering a set of future study propositions.