Learning Brief: Farmers’ Health as a Driver of Cocoa Supply Chain Resilience
- Authors
- Harry Coleman, Heloise Widdig
- Publication year
- February 2026
The long-term sustainability of the cocoa sector is inextricably linked to the physical and mental well-being of the smallholder farmers who underpin the global supply chain. This brief brings together the existing evidence on the health issues cocoa farmers face, their links to productivity and well-being, and the steps the cocoa industry can take to start investing in a solution.
Key points:
- Farmers’ health suffers through not just physical complaints (injury, chemical, pesticide and sun-related exposure, snake bites, infectious disease) but mental and stress-related, linked to financial worries and the pressures of cocoa farming
- Medical emergencies and health expenditures can compound to produce significant losses for individual farms and supply chain exports
- For the poorest farming households, evidence suggests yield improvements have a bigger impact on living income than price increases alone
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