This project seeks to respond to the new EU requirements for the entry of 7 commodities, including cocoa, into its market. Although certification is not required, but rather a declaration, this must be based on and supported by documents that are easy to read, that guarantee the quality of the information gathered, its reliability, its validity, its capacity to be updated so as to have up-to-date information at the time it is required, and it must be verifiable. To achieve this, the following strategic steps will be taken:

• Analysis of preconditions of each of the participating associative enterprises, as well as of the producers. In this first step, relevant information will be collected from the producers regarding: production system, health conditions of their cocoa, potential for certification (GAP or CFA).
• Rapid mapping of chain actors The aim is to determine who is present in the territory, to define their potential and to provide them with a summary of the requirements of the EU cocoa market. 
• Deforestation Free Cocoa Verification For which it is necessary to review the conditions in which the following aspects are found in each of the associative companies for the generation of cartographic information that will feed the traceability system, sustainable production and free of deforestation: Preparation of the work plan with the participating organisations; Survey of cartographic information of the cocoa plots in areas free of deforestation, if you do not have it you have to take the coordinate with GPS or with the mobile phone as long as the cocoa farm is less than 4 hectares and, in case it is greater than 4 hectares, take the polygon; Configuration of the geographic information survey project in the Qfield application according to the information requirements established by the EU and validated by the Ministry of Environment, Water and Ecological Transition (MAATE); Reception, compilation, processing and systematisation (geodatabase) of the information generated by the mapping team from the implementation of the work plan; In cocoa plots larger than 4 hectares, make individual maps (per *partner farm) in image format (.jpg format); Account on the Global Forest Watch platform with the information generated from the forest analysis in mapped plots.
• Traceability which complements the due diligence process with the implementation of the Administrative, Commercial and Accounting System (SAC) for which the following should be carried out: Survey of the current state of implementation of SAC in a partner SME of ANECACAO and in REDES COCPE of the EPS; Improve the SAC in the MSMEs since both have control systems in operation and are adequate for traceability, but they should be linked for their integral operation; Printing of QR codes linked to the location of each of the supplier cocoa plots; Issuing reports both at the time of purchase on the farm, as well as summaries of the operations carried out during a day or during the week or the required period; this will also serve to prepare the financial reports that will be delivered semi-annually to the partners; Issuing the necessary requirements for export to EU markets through the defined marketing channels.
• Deforestation-Free Cocoa Market either by building the loyalty of existing buyers through the delivery of cocoa that meets EU requirements or by finding new marketing channels. To this end, the participation of the companies in the CHOKAO Fair in Guayaquil, the most important fair in the country, participation in business rounds to reach marketing agreements for deforestation-free cocoa and in F2F meetings with European businessmen and from other regions who are interested in deforestation-free cocoa is foreseen.

• Small and medium-sized enterprises in the cocoa sector that are members of ANECACAO and the Popular and Solidarity Economy (EPS): this is the main target group of this pilot project and consists of the 32 members of ANECACAO and the 27 organisations of the EPS. The pilot actions will be aimed at one ANECACAO member company and one EPS associative company; in this way it will be possible to jointly improve both the private economy sector and the popular and solidarity economy sector, given that both sectors in the cocoa value chain generate more than 500,000 direct and indirect jobs and bring together more than 100,000 families that depend on the income generated by the activity in the different links of the supply chain. Both companies are still too weakly organised to meet the requirements of deforestation-free cocoa export regulations.

• Small producers who deliver their production to the MSME partners of ANECACAO and EPS: these are the 2,500 families who make it possible for Ecuadorian cocoa to have the quality recognised worldwide and who live in conditions of vulnerability due to unsatisfied basic needs, low income from agricultural products, the use of agrotoxins on their crops; these families will be directly impacted if they do not manage to sell their cocoa on the EU market. In addition, they find themselves in a dilemma between: 1) increasing the areas under cultivation, resorting to deforestation of forests and GHG emissions, and 2) production under agroforestry systems that increase productivity without generating deforestation or forest degradation.

Fernando Ormaza Hidalgo

Project Coordinator - CODESPA