Improving farmer wellbeing is central to sustainable cocoa value chains, yet little is known about the mechanisms through which private sustainability strategies generate such effects. Drawing on justice theory, this study analyses how distributive, procedural, and recognition justice shape farmer wellbeing within cooperatives, corporate sustainability programmes, and social enterprises. Using process tracing and mixed data from three cases in the Peruvian Amazon, the results show that governance practices perceived as fair across these justice dimensions enhance farmers’ wellbeing, satisfaction, and commitment. Distributive justice emerges as particularly important, and farmers tend to hold cooperatives to higher fairness expectations than private companies.

Prepared by the Swiss Alliance for Global Research Partnerships (GRP-Alliance), this guide supports research partners in developing effective, equitable, and impactful collaborations. It presents six core principles designed to enhance cooperation across diverse contexts and offers a flexible framework adaptable to different forms of partnership. Beyond research, these principles are also relevant to global teaching collaborations.

Based on ethnographic research in two municipalities of southern Minas Gerais, this article explores how young adults working in Brazil’s coffee sector navigate difficult socio-environmental conditions in plantation labour by moving into emerging professions such as coffee grading, sensory evaluation, and barista work. These “caféology” careers allow them to gain autonomy, prestige, and in some cases international recognition within the specialty coffee movement, extending their activities into urban and even Global North settings. Yet, while these paths represent a quiet strategy of emancipation from the constraints of plantation work, they remain shaped by the broader pressures of neoliberal global agri-food systems and do not fully resolve structural vulnerabilities in the rural coffee economy.

A global team of researchers led by ETH Zurich, ICARDA, and CIMMYT has released the Global Wheat Full Semantic Organ Segmentation (GWFSS) dataset — a major open-access resource for improving computer vision in crop phenotyping. The dataset includes over 50,000 RGB images of wheat fields from 11 institutions across five continents, enabling the development of AI models for organ-level segmentation (leaves, stems, spikes) to support wheat breeding and agroecological research in diverse environments.

Carbonyl sulfide (COS) is a gas used to study the carbon cycle because plants absorb it in a similar way as they absorb carbon dioxide. However, to use COS effectively, all sources and sinks must be understood and nowadays there still is an unexplained missing sink in high northern latitudes. Budget calculations of COS in boreal regions typically look at the contribution of forests, but not of wetlands. We measured COS fluxes over a boreal wetland, compared them to COS fluxes measured over a nearby forest and upscaled the fluxes to estimate their contribution to the boreal region and to verify if boreal wetlands can account for the missing sink. With our measurements we show the importance of including boreal wetland COS fluxes in budget calculation

This conceptual paper compares three overarching frameworks used to analyze agri-food systems: multifunctionality, ecosystem services, and the just transition approach. The authors argue that while the first two concepts have been useful for recognizing agriculture’s multiple functions and environmental contributions, they fall short of addressing systemic social and ecological challenges. The “just transition” framework is proposed as a more comprehensive alternative that integrates justice, sustainability, and governance dimensions, offering pathways for transformative policy innovations toward equitable and sustainable food systems.

A risk assessment framework based on a global synthesis of food system modeling reveals how individual and combined interventions can reduce the risk of overshooting critical environmental limits—land use, GHG emissions, freshwater use, and nutrient cycles—by 2050.

The report provides a systematic analysis of the similarities and differences among pricing schemes while exploring innovative legal and institutional frameworks and approaches that could help to scale them to the macro level. By combining insights from micro-/meso-level analysis of private-sector innovations together with assessment of relevant regulatory developments at the macro level, the report addresses the prerequisites, challenges, and limitations of pricing strategies aimed at promoting a living income. 

Syntropic farming systems (SFS), inspired by natural succession and stratification, combine annual and perennial plants in diverse, actively managed systems. While most examples come from the tropics, they show potential to enhance agrobiodiversity, soil fertility, climate resilience, and yield quality. However, scientific data—especially from temperate regions—is limited. A review of 67 studies highlights SFS benefits but also notes challenges.

A 2025 article by Kelvin Mulungu, Menale Kassie, and Maurice Tschopp from the Centre for Development and Environment (CDE) reviews 49 studies on ICT-based agricultural extension. It finds that digital tools such as mobile apps, SMS, videos, and voice services significantly improve farmers’ awareness, adoption of good practices, yields, and incomes. The authors highlight that effective ICT interventions require locally adapted content, training, and integration with complementary measures to maximize impact.

The yearbook, jointly published by FiBL and IFOAM – Organics International, is supported by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the Coop Sustainability Fund, Bio Suisse and NürnbergMesse, the organiser of BIOFACH. Data was collected from 188 countries.

GAIN Working Paper n°43

Dissertation

Reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) projects and programmes promise to deliver performance-based, cost-effective climate change mitigation. Fifteen years after its conception, we analysed the rigorous counterfactual-based evidence for environmental and welfare effects from such national and subnational initiatives, along with a Theory of Change.

This study investigated the performance of cocoa trees within an irrigated cocoa plantation situated in the semi-arid region of Bahia, Brazil. Two treatments were compared: “full sun,” where cocoa trees were not shaded, and “shade,” where trees were covered with a shading net absorbing 30 % of the radiation. The findings highlight the potential of dendrometers to quantify this effect what can be used in future to optimize management practices. By doing so, more effective strategies can be developed to enhance cocoa yield and overall productivity in semi-arid regions.

Master thesis supervised by:

Prof. Dr. Johanna Jacobi (Agroecological Transition (AET), ETH Zurich)

Dr. Christian Andres (Sustainable Agroecosystem (SAE), ETH Zurich)

he breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. We buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI).

The breakdown of plant material fuels soil functioning and biodiversity. Currently, process understanding of global decomposition patterns and the drivers of such patterns are hampered by the lack of coherent large-scale datasets. The authors buried 36,000 individual litterbags (tea bags) worldwide and found an overall negative correlation between initial mass-loss rates and stabilization factors of plant-derived carbon, using the Tea Bag Index (TBI). Learn more.

This study compared synthetic insecticide and botanical/biopesticide residues in conventional and organic agricultural production systems after nine years of continuous cultivation of a maize-based crop rotation system at two sites in Kenya. The results show high detectable concentrations of synthetic insecticide residues (imidacloprid, acetamiprid, chlorpyrifos, and chlorantraniliprole) in conventional plant produce and soil.

published by FiBL and IFOAM – Organics International

A Proposal for the Implementation of Art. 104a lit. d of the Swiss Federal Constitution

Soil-dwelling insect pests may cause considerable damage to crops worldwide, and their belowground lifestyle makes them hard to control. Amongst the most promising control agents for subterranean pests are soilborne entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) such as Metarhizium brunneum. Albeit EPF can be highly pathogenic to their target pest species under laboratory conditions, their efcacy in the feld is often limited due to adverse environmental conditions. Here, we test for the first time if the efcacy of EPF can be improved when they are augmented with trap crops.

Fragmented governance of international value chains, operating in multiple jurisdictions, is insufficient to prevent social and environmental mismanagement. Smart Mixes, which are combinations of compulsory and voluntary measures, have been proposed as a possible means of securing environmental and social standards, but the concept has not been operationalized in the academic literature. The results suggest that Smart Mixes are effective when they cover a specific issue under conditions in which enforcement mechanisms create a level playing field: thereby aligning public and private sector interests. The keys to success in a Smart Mix include positive interactions, harmonization, and complementary and supportive measures, which combine to motivate engagement by the private sector. We conclude that Smart Mixes can contribute to sustainability in value chains but their effectiveness is dependent on the strength of the relationships between the measures that compose them.

A significant amount of the carbon (C) assimilated in photosynthesis by trees is re-emitted to the atmosphere via the respiratory CO2 flux of roots. Because of technical constraints, we have little understanding of the extent and dynamics of the respiratory CO2 flux of roots at the total root system scale (RCF). This study aimed to fill this gap and to quantify the daily C budget of entire trees. Aeroponics was used as a novel approach to measure directly and simultaneously RCF and the net CO2 flux of the entire shoot (SCF).

Given the rapid changes in tropical agricultural production, the evaluation of different management practices has gained interest to determine the effects of land-use change on biodiversity. The conversion of forests into agricultural land is one of the main drivers of diversity loss. Agroforestry systems have been shown as a promising option to provide suitable yields in addition to conserving biodiversity. In this study we compared species richness and community composition of terrestrial ants in six different systems in a long-term experimental site established in 2009 in Bolivia.

Evaluation of the effect of integrating soil inputs in conservation tillage on yield and yield stability in Meru South, Upper Eastern Kenya, for eleven consecutive cropping seasons.

Poor seed quality and climate change significantly affect the maize value chain in Burkina Faso. To address the challenges, a catalytic project titled “Strengthening resilient seed systems in the maize value chain in Burkina Faso—from research to markets” was initiated to enhance the development of a resilient maize value chain. This study aims to assess the role of the project in developing a sustainable and resilient maize value chain. In this study, a mixed approach was used in design and implementation: qualitative research using key informants’ interviews, secondary data such as baseline survey reports, and lessons learned during the seed value chain greening intervention implemented in the Hauts-Bassins and Cascades regions of Burkina Faso.

The use of improved plant genetic material should support a sustainable increase of cacao production. In this study, we evaluate and compare the yield performance of four locally-selected clones with those of four widely-used international clones in South America and four full-sib families (crosses of the same international clones). The research was conducted in a long-term trial in Bolivia with different production systems, including monocultures and agroforestry systems under organic and conventional farming and a successional agroforestry system without external inputs.

Most agricultural soils have ample total phosphorus (P) reserves but are very low in plant-available fractions for optimal productivity. This study gives insights into technologies, which increase the labile P concentrations and reduce the potential depletion of the non-renewable rock phosphate and the use of inorganic phosphatic fertilizers for agricultural production.

The contribution of smallholder farming systems to the National greenhouse gas (GHG) budget is missing in most developing countries, including Kenya. This study highlights that smallholder farmers in Upper Eastern Kenya contribute a limited amount of soil GHG emissions and thus could act as a nature-based solution for lowering agricultural emissions.

Authors propose a multidimensional framework based on farmers' perceived motivations to evaluate the factors enabling or hindering the adoption of organic agriculture.

The dependency of our food system on fossil fuel-based fertilizers led to a devastating impact on the environment, while 85 to 95% of fertilizers applied to the soil are lost.

Step-by-step guide for the application and implementation of a decision support framework for mainstreaming and scaling out of sustainable land management

The authors argue, amongst other things, that extensive reforms on how Northern funding is distributed are needed.

Winner of the 2022 Thomas Cottier Award for Best Thesis, published as a Working Paper of the World Trade Institute

The paper investigates how science funders can actively promote science-society-policy interactions through transdisciplinary research as a means to advance sustainable development in the Global South.

The study examines two cocoa supply chains using sex-disaggregated survey data from producing communities in Ecuador
and Uganda that supply the Swiss market

Authors conducted over 150 interviews to find out if high-value agriculture contributes to rural incomes in a durable way.

This study aimed to estimate the GHG balance at the farm scale and identify environmental hotspots and mitigation opportunities among smallholder sorghum farms in Western Kenya.

Switzerland depends on globally imported food products and production inputs. For this reason, Agroscope publishes an annual report on Switzerland’s supply security.

This paper draws on ongoing research in Laos, where improved concession inventory efforts have helped stimulate a wide-ranging debate (both in and out of government) about the country’s stillopaque processes of concession taxation. Using the rubber sector, this paper examines a pair of concession-taxation strategies that have been pursued to varying degrees both in Laos and more broadly:

Survey with 590 farmers across Morocco, Spain and Tunisia to explore concepts that are cognitively associated with soil and perceptions of tillage and evaluation of differences in perceptions of innovation, community, adaptive capacity, and responsibility for soil.

Training handbook on African organic farms.

Latest available data on certified organic agriculture worldwide from 190 countries shows that in 2020, almost 75 million hectares of agricultural land (1.6% of the total farmland) were under organic management.

Over the past few decades, increasingly intensive maize farming by smallholders in the uplands of northern Thailand has produced a maize boom that has fed the country’s livestock industry. Despite continuously high demand for feed maize, its cultivation has declined unexpectedly over the past decade, pointing to a major land use transition in the uplands. This study investigates the causes of this maize bust and its accompanying land use changes from the perspectives of smallholders. Drawing from fieldwork in the northern province of Nan, we examined their household-level decision-making, challenges, and future visions around land use and livelihoods.

Most studies focusing on adoption of sustainable farming practices in cocoa disregard value chain factors. The objective of this study was to understand: (a) how important value chain factors are, relative to farmer and farm factors, for cocoa farmers’ implementation of sustainable farming practices and (b) through which mechanisms value chain factors influence sustainable farming practices implementation. The authors found that value chain factors are comparable to farmer and farm factors in explaining the implementation of sustainable farming practices across dimensions. Both capacity building and stable relationships were significantly related with the implementation of certain sustainable farming practices.

Based on evidence from the coffee heartlands of Rwanda and Laos, this policy brief from CDE highlights tools for measuring the impacts of agricultural growth on poverty in rural areas.

Three ppt presentations - Part 1: Global data 2021 and survey background; Part 2: Land use and crops 2021; Part 3 : Organic agriculture in the regions 2021.

The new 2021/2022 Activity Report provides insights into activities at all of FiBL’s locations, including measures for improved agriculture and livestock farming in the Sahel.

Highlights and Performance from 2022

This chapter examines processes of land grabbing in Laos, where the government has granted 4 percent of the national territory to foreign and domestic plantation, mining, and hydropower investors. A major portion of this land has been developed through the coercive dispossession of peasant land. However, the development of land concessions has not been a frictionless process as peasants have become increasingly frustrated with the expropriation of their land and have found various ways to voice their concerns within the country’s constrained political environment While the Lao government has made significant reforms to land-related policies in recent years, we show how these changes are driven by dynamic social and political relationships amongst state agencies, foreign investors, and peasant communities.

The authors introduce a mixing board to break down the complexity of integrated landscape approaches.

CDE researchers have worked with the government of Laos for the last few years, taking stock of land concessions and studying their quality, among other things. Today, a custom designed national digital information system enables Laos to effectively manage its concessions.

Authors argue that current structures in Global North-South research for development need to improve in order to fully use the potential of transdisciplinarity for sustainability transformation.

This paper provides the first empirical evidence of how the rise in greenhouse farming changes labor demand ...

This paper aims to support diferentiation between sustainable and unsustainable agricultural production, with a view to

enabling a transformative agricultural trade system by incentivizing sustainable agricultural production. We argue that

transformative governance of corresponding global trade fows will need to provide support to the weaker participants

in production systems, above all small-scale farmers in the global South, in order to support their food security and a path

out of poverty as well as global environmental goals. The present article seeks to provide an overview of internationally

agreed norms that can serve as basis for diferentiation between sustainable and unsustainable agricultural systems. Such

common objectives and benchmarks could then be used in multilateral and binational trade agreements.

Review examining literature on the impacts of agricultural commercialization in the Mekong on local livelihoods and investigating the research traditions that shape the conceptualization of research

New briefing report. The United Nations adopted the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas in 2018 and enshrined the right to seeds in international human rights law.

One of the core challenges to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) is to spatially identify, and strategically prioritise, the areas to implement actions to avoid, reduce and reverse land degradation. To achieve this, a tool for a participatory and data-driven assessment considering both the biophysical and socio-economic dimensions of land degradation across scales was developed for Ecuador. In this paper, we present the methodology and results obtained, including the spatially explicit interactive tool developed to integrate indicators that support the scaling-up of sustainable land management (SLM).

Shifting cultivation, a vital system in tropical landscapes, is undergoing exciting transitions. Eight archetypes, from perennial plantation crops to restored secondary forests, encapsulate these transitions. Factors like higher expected land rents, resulting form increased market access, crop price surges, secure land tenure, and state interventions are the main drivers of archetypical transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent agroforestry, permanent non-perennial crops and wood plantation.Meanwhile, prioritizing other on- and off-farm activities leads to transitions to regrown secondary forests and non-cultivated non-forested lands.

The consequences of these transitions are diverse and context-dependent. Positive environmental outcomes are seen in transitions to permanent agroforestry, regrown secondary forests, and restored secondary forests. However, economically profitable transitions to perennial plantation crops, permanent non-perennial crops, pasture, and wood plantations often result in negative environmental impacts. This diversity calls for a critical and contextualized appraisal of shifting cultivation and its transitions in designing land system policies that benefit both people and nature

Paper presents an exploratory comparative analysis of four cases from the cacao sectors of Peru and Switzerland.

Forest-frontier landscapes in the humid tropics display distinct land use change dynamics compared to other world regions, providing useful examples of current global environmental and development challenges. In northwestern Laos, part of the former Golden Triangle region, investments in value chains for commercial crops—mainly to fulfill Chinese market demands—have triggered various land use changes and put increasing pressure on remaining biodiverse forest areas. For this study a novel approach combining analysis of very high-resolution (VHR) satellite imagery with participatory mapping was applied. This enabled joint collection of annual land use information for the last 17 years together with local land users, shedding light on temporally dense land system dynamics. For decades, the government of Laos has sought to halt shifting cultivation, labeling it environmentally degrading, and to reduce poverty through promotion of permanent commodity-oriented commercial agriculture. Among other things, this gave rise to a boom in banana and rubber investments in Luang Namtha province in order to satisfy growing Chinese demand for these commodities. The present paper investigates the impact of these cash crop booms on land use transitions and whether they reduced pressure on forest-frontier areas, as ostensibly desired by government authorities

Study of smallholder households livelihood profiles in central Kenya in an area characterized by the presence of many large commercial farms

Fully-factorial greenhouse experiment to determine the interactive effect of Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (with and without), water deficit (four levels), and soil layer (topsoil and subsoil) on i.a. the biomass of seedlings of Commiphora myrrha

This Case Study is part of a series of research and policy publications co-authored by the Syngenta Foundation and New Markets Lab (NML) on regional seed policy harmonization in Africa.

While it is well known that drought reduces potato yield, little knowledge is available on the effect of a dry season on bioactive compounds. The results of this study provide valuable information regarding the effect of

drought stress in tuber composition and highlight the unexplored potential of the Chilean potato gene pool in the development of varieties with higher bioactive

content.

This paper examines the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and analyzes if the sector is resilient to withstand unexpected external shocks such as the pandemic and the hurricanes which impacted the region in the last months of 2020.

Few development benefits, many human and environmental risks. Analytical Report III

Opportunities and risks for researchers and funding institutions in Switzerland

11 Principles & 7 Questions

This report provides recommendations for funding institutions to evaluate the quality of global research partnerships.

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summary of tools applied in a working group (WP5) of the EU?project SUPURBFOOD (“Towards sustainable modes of urban and peri?urban food provisioning”, www.supurbfood.eu)

(RUNRES Project)

The interrelations between the International Treaty, its Article 9 on Farmers’ Rights, and Relevant Instruments of UPOV and WIPO.

An Analysis of Consumer Acceptance in Msunduzi, South Africa

Opportunities, Resources and Benefits

How the Syngenta Foundation defines sustainable agriculture (Working paper)

an input at Bioecon, Cambridge, 21.09. - 23.09.2014

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Report on an international conference on 24-25 January 2017 at Basel, Switzerland

Seed & Soils Task Force Organic Cotton Round Table

A collaboration between Louis Bolk Institute, Lanting Agriconsult, Research Institute of Organic Agriculture-FiBL, Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Textile Exchange

(Abstract only)

Schweizer Universitäten kooperieren verstärkt mit Institutionen in Asien, Lateinamerika und Afrika.

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The Current State of Empirical Research

A Human Rights Impact Assessment of UPOV 1991 Based on Case Studies in Kenya, Peru and the Philippines

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Public Keynote Address, Sixth McGill Conference on Global Food Security, Montreal, 8 October 2013

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A contribution from mountain areas to the International Year of Family Farming 2014

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Background paper for the 10th Global Meeting of the Emerging Markets Forum

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Highlights from 15 Years of Join Action for Sustainable Development

What Options do Policy-Makers Have for Promoting Food Security?

Proceedings of the session on global organic farming and market trends at BIOFACH 2018.

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Supporting transformation through applying agro-ecological principles and contributing to improved nutrition

A Human Rights-Based Approach to Food Systems Governance

The Honduran Poverty Reduction Strategy and Campesino Livelihoods in Western Honduras.

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How to reach large numbers of agricultural producers

with rural advisory services – a compilation of articles with

insights and innovations

Proceedings of an International Workshop Assessing sustainable diets within the sustainability of food systems

Mediterranean diet, organic food: new challenges

15–16 September 2014,

Research Centre for Food and Nutrition, CREA, Rome