 So Dietmar, it's 2019, the world feels like it's changing at a rapid pace. Why agroforestry? I mean you know that we are also in this kind of decade where we're working towards the sustainable development goals of which there are 17 and without going too much into detail. Agroforestry actually works towards all of these kind of sustainable development goals so there's a huge opportunity actually to use agroforestry to address certain social issues like poverty and hunger but also to address issues that have to do with the sustainable management of land where we have major issues in certain continents and countries in terms of land degradation. So agroforestry is actually also a very good solution to rehabilitate to restore these kind of lands, generate income for the people who are doing that and contributing all together to the sustainable development goals. Wow so I mean your work is in value chains, what do we need to do to make value chains more sustainable? I mean a value chain exists as you know of all the different actors starting from production, a farmer if you will producing certain agricultural crops, then there might be certain kind of processing in this kind of value chain and then that goes into if it is a long chain into wholesale retail and to the consumer and I think all of these different value chain actors have an important role to play and it would actually start with the very consumer so at the back side if you will of the value chain I mean there is actually one sustainable development goal that is exactly about responsible production and consumption so if the world all together moves towards more responsible consumption that would then provide a very strong signal to all those other value chain actors that are producing actually the raw materials a certain kind of food product or other type of product and that of course would need to be linked I think to some kind of incentives very often we talk about monetary incentives you could think about certain price premiums that are paid for certain kind of products that have a particularly good environmental footprint if you will that also have a social responsibility element linked to it that might link actually to certain types of certification systems that would seek to reward that kind of environment and social performance and then consumers paying for that that would be a good linkage so we're seeing more and more consumers are trying to be responsible and there's so many labels out there and now we've even got companies that are starting their own labels I mean are we confused like is it are we helping by buying products with the label and which label should we look out for yeah that's a very good question I think it is really confusing I mean worldwide we talk about hundreds probably already thousands of different labels and we cannot really expect that consumers would be fully aware what each and every label stands for how credible it is the claims that they make in terms of their environmental performance in terms of the social standards that try to adhere to so it is quite confusing and what I do observe sometimes is that there is even further push or drive towards even more newer labels and I think before we engage in that I think we should always ask the question first of all is there a market demand out there for that and is there also a way that we can communicate that to the consumers or to other actors in the value chain in order to be aware that this label really stands maybe for something different than what is already out there in the marketplace so yes we have to watch out that we don't overwhelm actually the consumers and we've seen them rainforest alliance recently have announced that they're going to launch a landscape label is it just another label on the market or are you seeing a bigger value in that to start with I think it is a great idea to think about how you can get to scale and I think this kind of effort to have like a landscape level certification is interesting because of course you could all of a sudden cover probably tens of thousands of hectares maybe thousands if not tens of thousands of producers so I think that there is a real value from that angle now what I rather would expect not being too easy is if a certain landscape is certified and then something goes wrong because certain people in the landscape don't adhere to a certain social environmental standard what does it mean for the certificate as a whole does a whole landscape then lose if you will the certificate or do you have to expel those people from that kind of landscape so I think there's a lot of practical issues I wouldn't be quite clear about how to solve that because we have at lower levels something similar in forestry where there's a so-called group certification scheme where several say small-holder groups enterprises can have one joint certificate and that brings down the cost the level of effort they have to put into that and at least there is possible one of the members doesn't comply with the standard you kick them out and then the remaining members still have the group certificate in a landscape I wouldn't be quite clear how you could use that another part is and I think that relates to what is already existing there is something like a denomination of origin where certain landscapes like here in France for instance we have quite a couple of them they have a brand name as something of their own and it doesn't really come as a certificate it's just tagged on the vine or the olives or any kind of other product it comes from here so I think if you want to use it as a marketing tool then you can use already existing systems like denomination of origin if it is more to introduce certain environmental social standards at the landscape level then we have to see what you do with those who are not able and or not willing to comply with those standards I think that's a really good point I mean how do small holders even sign up to those labels is it practical well the point from a small-holder perspective is it's many different aspects they would have to think about first of all what does the label mean in terms of what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do think of a organic certification they cannot use synthetic fertilizers they cannot use agrochemicals so that might bring down their productivity unless they have very good organic management procedures in place so there's a capacity building element linked to that another element is I think the costs for an individual small holder most of the certification costs are prohibited so you have to think about the level of aggregation where then say small holder enterprises like cooperatives pharmaceutical associations would have a certain label and that extends to their members to the small holders and then the cost can be shared by maybe hundreds or even thousands of small holders so you address your cost each year but I think it's equally important when you have this level of aggregation like a small holder enterprise that also helps to market later on the products I mean each and every small holder marketing on their own the relatively little volume they have that doesn't really give them a strong position on the value chain but if you bulk that at the level of a cooperative or a pharmacist association or another small holder enterprise then you have a much stronger actually position on the value chain that has another I think advantage and that can be very well linked to certification but you need to go to that level beyond the individual small holder farm is that an opportunity for NGOs and other civil society organizations to play a role in in group and those cooperatives definitely there is a point is it takes very long and we did a study actually a few years ago for an international foundation and it was about global review of rural community enterprises and we had community enterprises from the agricultural sector from forestry from tourism rural community based tourism and you found out that on average and you might be surprised it took them 40 years plus years plus to become mature to become relatively independent from NGO support from from projects from your nations and that means it's a very very long time spent that doesn't mean you couldn't cut it shorter you're pretty sure that if there's a clear strategy to approach it you can probably get it back to something like 10 years or so but still it's 10 years to get these called it rural community based enterprises more or less to a level of being self-sufficient and that means that very often since we are living in a time where each and everyone is supposed to have impact on a very short term two or three year projects and then the world already needs to be at a place which is good in terms of the level of ambition but to show that with unorganized small holders that after two three years something is dramatically different is not an easy one this is where you need these kind of organizations a small holder on enterprises but very often there is then kind of a self-selection of the NGOs and the projects they go where these organizations already exist because then they don't start from scratch and then they can show on a shorter period of time the kind of impact that maybe their funders their donors are expecting but that is a travel that leaves outside all those who are not organized and on a worldwide scale among small holders we estimate anything between 80 90 percent are not organized so you don't want to leave them behind you have to focus specifically on these but then the funders the donors investors need to be realistic that that is a much longer investment period that is needed to have a constant support to those groups to really become the chair and it's that you know money's always the root of all our problems and answers some might argue and is that what we're seeing here well here what I definitely hear in this congress is there's a very clear consensus that whatever we do needs an integrated approach and integrate means bringing together by a physical environmental elements social elements economic elements I think I've also heard it very much that everyone plays for cross sector collaborations so government working with NGOs NGOs working with private sector private sector working with government I think we are very clear on that I think we're also very clear about the magnitude of the challenges out there I think we are also very clear about the solutions that we have to offer everyone is aware that whatever solution they are working on is only part of a bigger picture of a set of solutions but I haven't heard so much I have heard it but not so much about this time horizon and particularly that we need very long periods of time and that we then have an institutional framework and it includes all the investors and funders who are with us for that long period of time and I guess at the moment like the problems feel so large I mean we're facing climate change more recently and biodiversity has been thrust into the limelight and actually how serious that is and we're starting to well the public now is starting to learn more about soil health and the impact that's going to have on food security so what role do you see big business playing in helping us combat these challenges I mean big business definitely has a huge role to play in if you were just to take the cocoa sector and then say chocolate manufacturers as the big business this is a hundred billion dollar businesses so yeah involving anything between five and six million smallholder households so if you count five members roughly per house that's 25 30 million people directly depending on cocoa production so there's already a linkage I think in this sense and that means we have to find a way where the revenues that are generated by by the big business that part of that is reinvested and I think reinvested not only in terms of paying in this case a price of cocoa at the farm gate but also reinvesting in the cocoa production system that gets us back to agroforestry we would think that a cocoa-based agroforestry system is actually both in the interest of the smallholder because there might be shade trees that produce certain fruits maybe fuel would maybe timber that actually also protect to a certain extent the cocoa harvest it automatically means that these smallholders can sell different types of products from the same production system it is definitely more resilient in terms of climate climate change climate variability so it should actually be also the very interest of the chocolate industry that in addition to cocoa that they are buying from those systems that helps to stabilize actually the overall production system and I would say the livelihood system of the farmers that are producing the cocoa we do see certain initiatives already coming up definitely some of those businesses are further down the road there's an overall commitment of the chocolate industry to get the cocoa sector sustainable by the year 2020 it's just around the corner we have different definitions of sustainability and probably here in this kind of event we have a very broad definition of sustainability environmental social economic factors sometimes the view of big business might be well it's about sustainable sourcing and that means ensuring certain levels of volumes and quality over a longer period of time but there's probably a pretty narrow definition of sustainability others are aware that you have to go beyond that to ensure that really the livelihood systems are more sustainable over time but we would like to see and we see something emerging but it still needs to gain more momentum our investments in rejuvenating for instance cocoa based agroforestry systems a real investment on the part of the industry there that goes beyond the cocoa you need really this more integrated agroforestry system so we are moving in the right direction do we move at the right speed i don't think so we have to accelerate that we have to get more into that and sometimes i would like to think if you think of again the cocoa market is a concrete example i mean the world market price for cocoa has come down over the last two years or so and that essentially is a savings on the part of the big business because that kind of lower cocoa price is not passed on easily to the consumer that your chocolate product that you get here in the supermarket is cheaper so there's some kind of savings and i would like to think that part of that money of course they need other parts of the business that's for sure and reinvesting also in processing plants etc but i would love to think that part of these savings simply because of a lower cocoa price are reinvested at the farm level in these more long-term oriented more sustainable cocoa-based agroforestry systems