Mondelez International, Inc. has unveiled “Cocoa Life” – the company’s largest, most comprehensive cocoa sustainability effort to date. As the world’s largest chocolate company, it will invest $400 million over the next ten years to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of more 200,000 cocoa farmers and about one million people in cocoa farming communities.
29 Nov 2012 --- Cocoa Life will bring a $100 million new investment to Côte d’Ivoire – the world’s largest cocoa producing country – to help 75,000 farmers double their productivity. “I’m proud of Mondelez International’s $400 million investment in Cocoa Life — a distinctive, holistic approach to cocoa sustainability that will create a cycle of growth from bean to bar,” said Tim Cofer, Executive Vice President and President, Europe from Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire at the World Cocoa Conference. “Our mission is to create thriving cocoa communities and help secure the future of the cocoa industry.”
Cocoa Life will collaborate with governments, civil society and suppliers with a mission to transform the cocoa supply chain. The company is already working with third party experts such the United Nations Development Program, the World Wildlife Fund and Anti-Slavery International to develop a robust set of principles for success and ways to measure progress.
Cocoa Life’s approach is to create win-win relationships and benefit farming communities by working with partners in four key ways:
• Farming: helping farmers improve their yields and livelihoods to earn larger incomes.
• Community: empowering cocoa farming families to create the kind of communities they and their children want to live in, while promoting gender equality.
• Youth: working towards eliminating child labor by helping communities tackle its root causes. Making cocoa farming a more attractive profession for the next generation.
• Environment: protecting the landscapes in which cocoa is grown to maintain eco-systems and provide viable environments and farming land for future generations.
Cocoa Life is based on Mondelez International’s successful Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Ghana, India and the Dominican Republic. In Ghana, the Partnership has helped create a 20% increase in cocoa yields, a 200% increase in household incomes and an 80%increase in government-backed development projects in the first phases of the project between 2009-2011. The company continues to expand its reach to more communities in Ghana and extended the partnership to the Dominican Republic in 2011. And in India, the company has been working directly with cocoa farmers for 50 years.
Cocoa Life reflects Mondelez International’s core values and builds on its previous commitments, including its goal to sustainably source 100 percent of its European coffee by 2015 and its “Coffee Made Happy” initiative to invest at least $200 million to empower one million coffee farming entrepreneurs by 2020.
