- Smallholder farmers and associations have mixed views on whether the EUDR, a regulation to prevent deforestation-linked products from entering the EU, should be delayed by 12 months.
- While smallholder associations in Africa and Indonesia say they are supportive and prepared for Jan. 1, when the regulation is scheduled to go into force, others say they need extra time or increased government support.
- Most environmentalists say instead of helping smallholders, a delay will kill momentum, allow businesses to prevent its implementation and lead to more deforestation; some forestry researchers say a delay will refine the EUDR and help struggling farmers.
- The cocoa sector is much better prepared for the EUDR than other commodity sectors since Ghana and Ivory Coast prioritized a national approach, got ready early and started investing heavily in farm traceability, researchers say.
Smallholder farmers’ views on a proposed delay to a key EU forest conservation law remain mixed as the union’s Parliament is set to vote on a decision Nov. 13 and 14.
The EU anti-deforestation regulation (EUDR), which would prevent companies from placing products linked to deforestation in the EU market, is so far scheduled to go into force Jan. 1, 2025. Smallholder associations part of supply chains for products like cocoa, coffee and palm oil from Africa and Indonesia say they are prepared for the date. However, some reports, such as in Honduras, say there exist smallholders who aren’t even aware of the EUDR, let alone prepared to comply.
“On the one hand, it gives me some breathing room to ensure that I become fully compliant and ready,” said Onyekachi Anozie Uwalaka, a smallholder farmer who grows oil palm and cacao in Nigeria. For him, the prospect of a one-year delay is bittersweet. “On the other hand, it also means that I might lose the momentum I have built up in terms of making these critical changes.”
Trade groups and exporting countries are underlining smallholders’ lack of readiness, and their own, to push for a delay in the law’s implementation. After hearing these calls, the EU Commission introduced the proposal to delay the law by 12 months (for Jan. 1, 2026), a suggestion now awaiting parliamentary approval.
If accepted, researchers, smallholder associations and NGOs, such as Fern, Earthsight and Mighty Earth, say they fear it will kill momentum, allow businesses to prevent its implementation and lead to more deforestation. Between 90% and 99% of deforestation in the tropics is driven directly or indirectly by agriculture. Indigenous and uncontacted communities are also impacted by industrial agriculture that clears forests on their traditional lands, such as cattle ranches in the Chaco and Amazon. According to Global Witness, a delay to the EUDR could lead to global deforestation levels equivalent to almost 14 times the size of Paris, emitting carbon equal to 188 million long-haul flights.
Other researchers, like the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), welcome the delay as an opportunity to refine the regulation, include diverse forest systems and better prepare struggling smallholders.
While speaking with several smallholder associations producing some of the key commodities tied to deforestation, they shared their thoughts about what it would mean for their farms and forests. Although some said it would give them more time to prepare and receive support from the government, others echoed environmentalists, fearing it may lead to a weakening of the law itself and their progress. Governments, like Indonesia, which supplied 39% of the EU’s palm oil imports from 2023-24, have already called for the law to be rolled back in the wake of the delay announcement.
The EU Commission said in a press release that “the extension proposal in no way puts into question the objectives or the substance of the law, as agreed by the EU co-legislators.”
The Confederation of European Business, known as BusinessEurope, a lobby group representing businesses in the union, also welcomed the commission’s proposal to postpone. “The recent publication of the additional guidance documents and the international cooperation framework are welcomed steps, but we still miss important elements for a good EUDR implementation,” it said in a press statement.
Deep concerns on both sides
The Ivorian Platform for Sustainable Cocoa and the Ghana Civil Society Cocoa Platform, which represent 120 civil society and farmers’ organizations and more than 700,000 small cacao farm owners in Ivory Coast and Ghana, wrote in a letter to the EU that they had “deep concerns” about a potential delay. Cocoa cultivation is a driver of about 37% of deforestation in the Ivory Coast.
The groups said they were “not unaware of the challenges involved in setting up robust traceability systems with geolocation, particularly for small farm plots,” but that smallholders were “actively preparing” for the legislation.
To enter the EU market, companies must ensure that products on its list are deforestation-free, traceable and legal. Tracing the origins of products that may be derived from Indigenous or local farmers working small plots of land on the other side of the world requires complex systems and transparency. Companies, national regulator boards or smallholders must collect information about the production area, especially geographic data, and meet traceability requirements. This is submitted to the Information System, a specialized online tool that streamlines the creation of due diligence statements within supply chains.
In preparation for the EDUR, Ivory Coast has accelerated the implementation of its national cocoa traceability system, which includes the geolocation of farm plots and the provision of maps to producers. The country has begun distributing ID cards to farmers that will increase traceability and allow them to receive e-payments.
Meanwhile, Ghana has begun its pilot program to trace cacao beans from the farm where they are produced to the port of shipment. “We have polygon-mapped all the cocoa in Ghana, established an end-to-end traceability system,” Michael Amoah, from Ghanaian cocoa regulator Cocobod, told a webinar organized by Fern and Mighty Earth.
But, according to Mary Kageni, a research, policy, lobby and advocacy officer at the Kenya National Farmers’ Federation, not everyone is ready. One of the primary challenges faced by farmers preparing for the EUDR is understanding the complex regulatory framework and the technical requirements for compliance.
“By giving farmers additional time to understand and implement these complex requirements, the EU can ensure that the shift toward sustainable farming practices does not disproportionately burden smaller agricultural businesses that lack the immediate resources for rapid adaptation,” she said.
A trade group in Honduras in favor of the delay shared a similar view. According to Miguel Pon, the executive president of the Association of Coffee Exporters of Honduras, many smallholder coffee farmers consider the EUDR to be exclusive as they’ll be left out of the market until they are prepared with all the data, points and polygons. This will affect “the little income they receive, motivating the abandonment of the crop, poverty and irregular migration,” he said.
A delay in implementation would be helpful, Pon told Mongabay. But he said coffee farmers in Honduras would need even more time and resources to implement a proper traceability system as most of the country’s production goes through an opaque web of intermediaries.
Smallholders from tropical regions who practice sustainable farming systems, like agroforestry, might also be negatively impacted by the regulation’s deforestation risk assessments by error, CIFOR-ICRAF scientists said in a statement. They called on a delay to address gaps in the text to better protect these farmers.
“The diversity of coffee, cacao and rubber agroforestry systems is often not adequately captured within binary ‘forest/non-forest’ definitions or by maps of tree cover,” they said. “These diverse agroforestry systems also contribute very differently to land-use dynamics, as some contribute to stabilizing (not amplifying) farm-forest frontiers.”
Cocoa sector is better prepared
According to Ethan Budiansky, the associate director of sustainable commodities at the Wildlife Conservation Society, in terms of preparation, the cocoa sector is much more advanced than most other commodity sectors. Nations and companies have invested significantly in traceability and have established teams focused on EUDR, he said. Ivory Coast and Ghana, which produce more than 50% of the world’s cocoa, have taken a more national approach in meeting the forest requirements instead of only relying on the private sector or leaving locals to figure it out. At the farm level, the smallholders have also put a lot of work into collecting the necessary geographic data and all the necessary information to be compliant.
This is because the sector started this work years before the EUDR came into the scene, Budiansky explained.
“Going back to 2018, they were already working on ensuring that their supply chains were not coming from protected areas and were not leading to new deforestation,” he said. And importantly, operators (companies and states) were “already investing heavily in increasing their farm level traceability, to actually map the farms and to know exactly where their cocoa is coming from.”
Chocolate-producing companies using cocoa like Ferrero, Mars Wrigley, Mondelēz International and Nestlé also underline their significant investments in applying the regulation. Dutch chocolate manufacturer Tony’s Chocolonely, which argued against a delay it said risks farmers’ livelihoods already impacted by climate change, stated that its farms are at present “100% polygon mapped” and implement sourcing principles.
But other commodities haven’t had that level of convening, coordination and collaboration, Budiansky said.
In Indonesia, while most cacao and coffee smallholders have close assistance from their buyers, the situation for oil palm farmers, especially rubber farmers, is different, according to Denny Bhatara, a senior campaigner at Kaoem Telapak, an Indonesian NGO that focuses on forestry and agriculture. NGOs like Oil Palm Smallholders Association (SPKS), have assisted farmers in mapping their plots in order for them to be a member of the organization, he told Mongabay, which indicates many are ready. A delay would discourage constructive efforts and lose momentum in supporting good governance in Indonesia, he said.
But Andre Barahamin, a member of the Kaoem Telapak organization, said that the preparedness of oil palm smallholders relies greatly on the Indonesian government. Many smallholders’ land rights in the country lack legal recognition, which can lead to difficulties in accessing critical resources and support.
“The readiness is not solely the responsibility of the smallholders, but also both the EU and Indonesian government’s readiness and willingness to engage with the smallholders,” he told Mongabay. “If you let them face the market by themselves, for sure the smallholders are not ready.”
In Indonesia’s North Aceh province, oil palm smallholders told Mongabay in September that they weren’t aware of the EUDR, let alone prepared to comply with it. For farmers like Jaharuddin, who cultivates oil palm and other crops on his 8 hectares (20 acres) of land and lives in areas where deforestation is ongoing, the EUDR could reduce the price of their crops, or exclude them completely from the supply chain to Europe.
If the EUDR is implemented without any support for smallholder farmers, “many of us would be disadvantaged,” Jaharuddin said.
Whether there is a delay or not, all sources agree government support is essential.
“Without such support, many farmers may inadvertently fail to comply,” Kageni from Kenya said, “risking penalties and potential loss of market access within the EU.”
For Uwalaka, the smallholder oil palm and cacao farmer in Nigeria: “The sooner I completely adapt to these regulations, the better it will be for our environment. I want to be part of the solution, not an obstacle.”
Banner image: An oil palm farmer in Benin extracting palm oil. Image by Linda De Volder via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Delay of EU Deforestation Regulation may ‘be excuse to gut law,’ activists fear
FEEDBACK: Use this form to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.
Correction (02/12/2024): Andre Barahamin no longer works for Kaoem Telapak since January 2024. However, he is still a member of the organization.
Credits
