Target 2.3: Double smallholder productivity and incomes
By 2030, double the agricultural productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous peoples, family farmers, pastoralists and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and opportunities for value addition and non-farm employment
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Smallholder incomes depend on land tenure, extension services and rural infrastructure, which are public. Buyer purchasing practices, however, set the farm-gate price in export commodity chains. In 2024, investors representing 8.8 trillion dollars urged six chocolate companies to ensure a living income for West African cocoa farmers by end-2025. The companies were Mars, Mondelez, Ferrero, Hershey, Nestle and Lindt. A 2024 ICCR resolution at Mondelez sought metrics on eradicating child labor from its cocoa supply chain. Access to financial services is also improving through private mobile-money providers, per Findex 2025. Owners help at the margin in specific commodity chains rather than across smallholder agriculture as a whole.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Against Exploitative Purchasing Practices: Investors Call on Chocolate Companies to Ensure a Living Income for Cocoa Farmers, Investor Advocates for Social Justice, 2024-05-20
- End Child Labor in Cocoa Production (Mondelez International, 2024), Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2024
- The Global Findex Database 2025, World Bank, 2025-07
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinated a letter from investors representing more than 8.8 trillion dollars asking the six largest chocolate companies to ensure a living income for cocoa farmers in their supply chains.
Filed a resolution at Mondelez seeking stronger monitoring of child labour in cocoa production, a condition tied to cocoa farmer poverty.
Demand that Mondelez End Child Labour in Cocoa Production, Tulipshare, 2023
2 campaigns on record
Ensure all cocoa farmers in their supply chains receive a living income by the end of 2025, offer long-term contracts that reduce farmer risk, and publish progress reports against the living income goal.
Result: Signed by investors representing more than 8.8 trillion dollars, sent 20 May 2024
Nestle and Mondelez agreed to meet the investors; Hershey, Mars and Lindt did not respond to the letter.
Strengthen child labour monitoring in the cocoa supply chain, including through distributed ledger and blockchain traceability technology.
Result: 19.8 percent in favour
Tulipshare stated the support level allowed it to refile the proposal at the 2024 annual meeting.
Demand that Mondelez End Child Labour in Cocoa Production, Tulipshare, 2023
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.