Cadbury and Fairtrade today announced a ground-breaking commitment to help more cocoa farmers, their families and their communities, by extending its farmer-focused Cocoa Life programme to Cadbury products globally. Starting in the UK & Ireland in May 2017, with a phased roll-out, Cocoa Life – an industry leading sustainable cocoa farming programme – will be extended across Cadbury chocolate brands in key markets across the world.
Cocoa Life puts farmers first and aims to empower current and future generations to create thriving farms which boost the entire community. Cocoa Life will benefit 200,000 farmers and 1 million people in communities in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, India and Brazil. To achieve this Mondelēz International will invest $400 million over ten years to 2022.
As the company scales up Cocoa Life, the partnership will bring more benefits to more farmers and communities and importantly continue to deliver measurable, independently verified improvements for cocoa farmers and cocoa-growing communities.
Fairtrade, the world’s largest and most recognised fair trade system, will become a partner for the whole Cocoa Life programme, working together to secure the long-term future of cocoa farming communities. In the UK and Ireland Cadbury brands will begin to transition to Cocoa Life. In Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa, Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate will remain certified throughout 2017. As part of the global roll out of Cocoa Life across Cadbury brands, they will move to carry the Cocoa Life logo on the front of pack during 2018.
Having achieved significant impact to date, Cadbury and Fairtrade will now work together on new innovative programmes to enhance the future for farming communities, such as building resilience to climate change – which cocoa farmers say is already a key threat to their livelihoods. In addition, Fairtrade will work with Cocoa Life to develop farmer organisations and, together, enhance the understanding and reporting of the programme’s impact on cocoa farmers, their families and their communities.
This expansion of Cocoa Life, combined with Fairtrade’s independent involvement, will give consumers the confidence that whenever they buy a Cadbury chocolate bar with the Cocoa Life label, they are helping cocoa farming communities to thrive, making a real difference to people’s lives.
FLOCERT, which also works as Fairtrade’s independent assurance and certification body, will also continue to independently verify the supply chain of Cocoa Life as the programme grows. This involves tracking the quantity of sustainably grown and traded cocoa and loyalty payments made to farmer organisations.
Glenn Caton, President, Northern Europe at Mondelēz International, commented: “Cocoa Life builds from Cadbury’s proud heritage of sourcing cocoa sustainably, which dates back to a hundred years ago when the Cadbury family helped establish cocoa farming in Ghana” “Through Cocoa Life, we want to become an accountable partner for our cocoa farmers, not just a buyer.
We are directly connecting buyers to farmers, enabling them to build long-term businesses. Cocoa Life truly transforms communities by delivering real and measurable improvements for cocoa farmers. We want to use our scale as the world’s largest chocolate maker to drive positive change for the communities on which we depend. We support Fairtrade’s vision to drive sustainable livelihoods through empowered farming organisations and communities and fairer terms of trade. We are proud to have Fairtrade’s support in helping us achieve this”.
Launched in Ghana in 2008 as the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership, Cocoa Life has already been rolled out across more than 795 cocoa farming communities around the world and independent verification shows that farmers’ in the Cocoa Life programme in Ghana have seen their incomes increase 49% more than farms outside the programme.
Michael Gidney, Chief Executive at the Fairtrade Foundation commented on the news:
“We are proud to have worked closely with Cadbury since 2009 to improve the lives of cocoa farmers and their communities. But the reality is that life for too many cocoa farmers remains a daily struggle against poverty, whilst their communities still lack many essential services and climate change poses increasing threats to their livelihoods and future.
“The evolution of our partnership with Cadbury and Cocoa Life is an exciting development as it embeds Fairtrade, our values, principles and unique relationships with farmer networks, into the whole programme. In doing so, together we can increase the scale and impact of Cocoa Life, towards a common goal – one in which cocoa farmers, their organisations and communities are empowered, can invest in their own future, and go from just surviving, to thriving.”
Cocoa Life fast facts
Today’s move by Cadbury will help Cocoa Life to deliver a number of benefits, including:
A $400m investment by 2022, empowering 200,000 farmers and reaching 1 million people in communities in Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Indonesia, the Dominican Republic, India and Brazil.
Independently assessed improvements to the lives and livelihoods of cocoa farmers and their communities – farmer income has increased 49% more and cocoa yield increased 37% more in
Ghanaian Cocoa Life communities than in communities outside the programme.
A competitive price for their cocoa, on clear terms of trade, and loyalty payments to Ghanaian farmers, which together with programme investments, will deliver value per farmer at least
equivalent to that previously delivered by Fairtrade premiums.
Investment in more than 795 cocoa farming communities, helping them set and deliver their own tailored action plans that address their needs – whether that’s education, healthcare,
infrastructure or other priorities.
Alongside Fairtrade, Cocoa Life is actively supported on the ground by NGO delivery partners including Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO), Save The Children, CARE International, World Vision, Swisscontact and Solidaridad, harnessing their long experience of working with cocoa growing communities to maximise the impact of the programme. Cocoa Life also involves experts from organisations like WWF, the UN Development Programme, and Anti-Slavery International in the design and oversight of the programme.
About Cocoa Life
Cocoa Life is a holistic and farmer centric approach working with communities to help them set their own tailored action plans that will deliver the most value for them around five outcomes:
Farming – helping farmers improve yield and earn higher incomes
Community – enabling cocoa farming families to create the kind of communities they and their children want to live in
Livelihoods – improving business skills and helping to develop additional source of income to lift people out of poverty
Youth – making cocoa faming a more attractive profession for young people
Environment – protecting the landscapes in which cocoa is grown to maintain the ecosystems and farming land for future generations.
Cocoa Life also aligns with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals, in areas such as empowerment of women, and promoting sustainable agriculture.
Cocoa Life’s core principles are:
Farming communities are at the centre of our approach
Partnerships are the key to lasting change
Our programme and our sourcing contracts are aligned
Mondelēz International’s ultimate goal is to sustainably source all the company’s cocoa supply, mainly via Cocoa Life. By working in partnership with farmers, NGOs, suppliers and government institutions, Cocoa Life answers Mondelēz International’s Call For Well-being, which urges employees, suppliers and community partners to join together to develop new approaches that can have a positive impact on the planet and its people. The Call For Well-being focuses on four key areas where the company can make the greatest impact: mindful snacking, sustainability, community and safety. Follow our progress at
www.cocoalife.org/progress.
Cadbury and Fairtrade’s impact to date
Since 2009, the partnership between Cadbury and Fairtrade has:
Enabled the establishment of strong farmer organisations and supported them to function efficiently, with effective governance and good business practices
Supported farmer organisations through Fairtrade premiums with the budget and capacity to carry out their own community development projects, and offer benefits to individual farmers and their communities, such as micro-saving and loan schemes, agricultural tools and farming inputs
Farming communities have benefitted from Fairtrade training on income diversification, workers’ rights and environmental sustainability
About Mondelēz International
Mondelēz International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MDLZ) is a global snacking powerhouse, with 2015 net revenues of approximately $30 billion. Creating delicious moments of joy in 165 countries, Mondelēz International is a world leader in biscuits, chocolate, gum, candy and powdered beverages, with billion-dollar brands such as Oreo, LU and Nabisco biscuits; Cadbury, Cadbury Dairy Milk and Milka chocolate; and Trident gum.
Mondelēz International is a proud member of the Standard and Poor’s 500, NASDAQ 100 and Dow Jones Sustainability Index. Visit www.mondelezinternational.com or follow us on Twitter at
www.twitter.com/MDLZ.
About The Fairtrade Foundation
The Fairtrade Foundation’s mission is to work with businesses, community groups and individuals to improve the trading position of producer organisations in developing countries and to deliver sustainable livelihoods for farmers, workers and their communities by:
being a passionate and ambitious development organisation committed to tackling poverty and injustice through trade;
engaging business in product and ingredient certification, and in programmes to bring about long term change for farmers, workers and their communities;
bringing together producers and consumers in a citizens’ movement for change; and
being recognised as the UK’s leading authority on fair trade
Today, more than 1.6 million people who work hard to produce coffee, tea, cocoa, bananas, wines, flowers, cotton, gold and many other products benefit from Fairtrade, which campaigns for as well as enables a fairer system of global trade. In 2015, UK retail sales of Fairtrade certified products exceeded £1.6 billion.
Beyond certification, the Fairtrade Foundation is increasingly building new partnerships with producer networks, business partners and local org
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.