Cocoa producers and industrialists are deeply concerned about the future of the crop, which is called the drink of the gods due to its taste and nutritional properties, because the moment the Council and the Parliament approved the regulation on the deforestation of European forests on May 31 of this year, the Union (EU) intends to ban several agricultural products exported to that important market would be affected if proven to have a history in plantations of forest areas cleared for agricultural purposes, without the trade agreement that Ecuador maintains with that Commonwealth of Nations. For now, on the first open list, meat, milk, coffee, soy, cocoa, palm oil, rubber, wood, as raw materials and their processed and semi-industrial products, are at risk. Bananas would be a candidate for later adaptation.

Ecuador records a decrease in water surface from 2000 to 2022

Unions will have to make an effort to educate their members about the scope of this law, which is mandatory for all operators, i.e. exporters and intermediaries, who interact with each other in the territory of 27 EU countries, and which will enter into force from December 2024. They must prove that they complied with the mandate of that regulatory instrument, which will determine additional costs that will affect the already affected competitiveness and well-being of farmers. Recognizing the good intention to stop this scourge, which represented the destruction from 1990 to 2020 of 420 million hectares of tree species, it is an exaggeration, a lack of rationality that reaches extremes comparable to what is constant in the old folk saying “not even much of that which burns a saint, not a little of that which does not shine on him,” because this could seriously harm agri-food chains and the people who make a living from them, making the objective meaning of zero hunger unattainable.

The environmental education competition ‘Saving the Daula basin’ seeks to involve the community in the protection of the river

Companies will have to show that their goods for export comply with the new regulations, for which it will be essential to have artificial intelligence-supported systems that facilitate online verification that regulations are not being violated, especially that plantations were established before 2020. They must have forms that satisfy the principles of due diligence and shared responsibility, with risk assessment and mitigation, excluding the placing on the market of products linked to forest degradation in the EU. Non-compliance would entail severe sanctions with fines of up to 4% of annual sales or the suspension of the violator’s business in the Community.

Indigenous communities are questioning the anti-mining operation that has engulfed large areas of the Ecuadorian Amazon

What has been established will have to be fulfilled without resulting in a restriction of free trade, the least that should be required is reciprocity from importers and retailers, a fair equalization of the current high agricultural costs increased by the new regulations, the elimination of capital shortages and a harmony between what they recognize as purchase price and real value of production, transport and marketing of cultivated products, preservation of biological diversity and compliance with national laws. (OR)