Mondelez International to Invest $400 Million in Sustainable Cocoa Farming
Mondelez International 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 than 200,000 cocoa farmers and about one million people in cocoa farming communities. Cocoa Life will bring a $100 million new investment to Cote 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,” says Tim Cofer, executive vice president and president, Europe, Mondelez International. “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 is based on Mondelez International’s successful Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Ghana,Indiaa nd theDominican Republic. In Ghana, the Partnership has helped create a 20 percent increase in cocoa yields, a 200 percent increase in household incomes and an 80 percent 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.
