Our approach 2019/20
Our approach 2019/20
The COVID-19 pandemic is underlining the importance of sustainable supply chains. Throughout the crisis, the protection of our people and the continuation of our operations are our priority. We continue sourcing from cocoa farmers, and to progress with many of our Forever Chocolate activities. Despite the challenges of COVID-19 in 2019/20, our persistence to drive new partnership development and execute innovative projects clearly demonstrates our passion to implement and scale Forever Chocolate. Thanks to the adoption of precautionary measures and the dedication and teamwork of our employees, we continued in the past fiscal year the mapping of farms and the collection of census data on the farming communities we source from. We were able to further progress with farmer training and coaching, the distribution of seedlings and trees, as well as providing agricultural inputs such as fertilizers, planting materials, crop and livestock diversification packages. In addition, we used our farmer network to distribute soap and public health authorities’ information on COVID-19.
Implementing innovative solutions to scale and drive impact
Innovation is one of the prerequisites for us to make progress on our Forever Chocolate targets. In fiscal year 2019/20, we have continued to drive and scale impact through innovative solutions and our results this year clearly show that we are consistently moving the needle. Our unique and extensive farm mapping database expanded to 181,861 farmers with full data in 2019/20. We use these datapoints to offer Farm Business Plans to cocoa farmers, consisting of tailor-made services such as tools, individual coaching and agricultural inputs to support and improve yields and farmer income. In 2019/20, the number of farmers who received Farm Business Plans (FBPs) grew to 41,178 (+153%). A total of 71,972 cocoa farmers have received farm service activities.
To help us to identify and address child labor in our cocoa supply chain, we continued in 2019/20 to roll out child labor monitoring and remediation systems based on the industry practice as developed by the International Cocoa Initiative (ICI).
In addition, this year we commenced the piloting of an innovative machine-learning model which combines the data from child labor monitoring and remediation systems with our farmer census data. Through this combination, we can assess the risk of children in a household to be involved in child labor. This allows us to better target our activities to those households where children need the most support.
As part of our 2025 commitment to end deforestation, we have publicly disclosed our direct cocoa suppliers in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana and Cameroon. By publicly disclosing this information, we have reached a new milestone in providing even greater transparency and traceability in our cocoa supply chain. It also demonstrates the evolution of our data collection capabilities and our confidence in the robustness of our data.
We also commenced a large-scale reforestation project to mitigate the impacts of climate change. This project will use a technology-driven approach to pilot the utilization of innovative seedling generation, planting and monitoring in harsh conditions.
Sustainable Chocolate
Now, more than ever, consumers are looking for products and brands they can trust, that offer consistent quality and purposeful vision on sustainability. This fiscal year, our global Gourmet brands have led the charge by implementing a sustainable cocoa supply chain. To support cocoa farmer livelihoods, global brand Callebaut is sustainably sourcing its cocoa via Cocoa Horizons, and relaunched its core chocolate range in which its cocoa mass is traceable back to the participating Cocoa Horizons farmer groups.
Cacao Barry invested in helping nature to thrive via its sustainable Pureté range, contributing to increased biodiversity at farm level via seedling distribution and carbon capture via cookstove distribution. Swiss Gourmet brand Carma is supplying its customers with 100% sustainable chocolate, going beyond sustainable cocoa sourcing to also have all other ingredients in their chocolate couvertures sustainably sourced.
Partnering for impact and an enabling environment
A sustainable cocoa supply chain can only be achieved with the support from public authorities. Without public intervention, company initiatives will progress much slower in making structural impact outside of their direct supply chains. Fundamental policy reform at origin country level is required in terms of mandating, among others, traceability for the entire cocoa supply chain, good land and forest governance and access to education. In addition, major cocoa importing countries and regions, notably the European Union (EU) and the United States (US), have the ability to drive change in the cocoa sector and demonstrate leadership, including through legislative action.
For this reason, in December 2019, Barry Callebaut partnered with other companies and NGOs, to call on the European Union to introduce legislation placing a due diligence obligation on all companies that place cocoa or cocoa products on the EU market. Furthermore, Barry Callebaut supported the announcement by the Ivorian and Ghanaian governments to implement a Living Income Differential (LID) of USD 400 per tonne of cocoa beans, effective as of the 2020/21 crop. We support this public intervention to support cocoa farmer incomes through the implementation of the LID. We have included the LID in our normal buying pattern and will continue to do so, working closely with the regulators of the two countries.
Join the movement
We need all the support and input we can get from experts, governments and chocolate lovers in order to make sustainable chocolate the norm. The Forever Chocolate movement is growing organically, and the more input we receive, the faster we will reach our destination. We welcome all feedback and offers for support.
