Big Interview
“At Cargill, we believe that advancing women’s empowerment advances the cocoa sector at large. We’re therefore working to make gender equality the norm throughout the cocoa chain and have signed up to UNWEP to advance those goals”
Alongside this initiative, we’re targeting other constraints
that hamper a child’s ability to thrive. Actions such as helping families procure birth certificates (which is a prerequisite for access to school), supplying school materials and equipment, supporting access to quality education, and supporting nutrition programs in households and at schools all reduce the risk of hazardous child labour. Because these issues are often interlinked, we’re also providing adults in their household – both women and men – with access to functional and technical trainings to support entrepreneurship, actions that enable additional income generation and thus reduce the likelihood of child labour.
Q: Looking ahead, what are your vision and goals for the next decade in terms of sustainability for Cargill’s Cocoa and Chocolate Business? How do you plan to continue driving positive change in an evolving industry landscape? As we look ahead to the next 10 years, we’ll continue to engage with all partners to advance solutions for emerging and cross-cutting issues like gender equity and living income, knowing our work to address these challenges also has implications for forest protection, climate adaptation, improved household resilience, child protection and more. While the bar should and will continue to rise, we’ll be innovating with purpose - working side-by-side with cocoa farming households and other partners, investing in technology, scaling holistic solutions, expanding partnerships, building resilience and strengthening trust, to build a thriving cocoa sector for generations to come.
Q: Congratulations on the 10-year anniversary of Cargill’s Cocoa Promise! Could you reflect on the journey of this initiative? What were the initial goals, and how have they evolved over the past decade to address the changing sustainability landscape? Thank you! Ten years ago, when we launched the Cargill Cocoa Promise, our overarching aim was to help farmers and their communities achieve better incomes and living standards while growing cocoa sustainably. Our goal was to go beyond certification to acknowledge other sustainability issues impacting farmers, such as improving cocoa farm productivity and working with cocoa-growing communities to enable access to social services.
20 Kennedy’s Confection October 2023 The approach was first launched in West Africa in 2012
and was expanded to Brazil the following year, with the first cocoa farmers becoming UTZ (now Rainforest Alliance) Certified. Today, we cover over 222,000 farmers and 660 farmer organisations across Brazil, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ecuador, Ghana and Indonesia. Early on, we realized we could not do this work alone,
and we sought out partners to help us collaborate with cocoa-farming households and communities to address critical needs. Today we have 60 partnerships to accelerate and magnify our efforts. We’ve made significant gains, especially as we’ve learned to look beyond symptoms and build programs that systemically address the root causes of some of the biggest sustainable development challenges facing the cocoa sector and the world. But, while there are reasons to celebrate, we also know we must continue to do more.
Q: The Cocoa Promise has impacted the lives of many farmers and communities. Can you share some success stories or examples of how this initiative has made a positive difference on the ground, both in terms of environmental sustainability and social development? There are so many stories to share! I’ve seen firsthand how we are empowering women like Marie Adjehi Nanou Bla to start their own business. With Cargill’s help Marie began selling frozen fish and chicken, eggs and gasoline. To do it, she accessed a Cargill and CARE-supported savings and loans program that has helped more than 11,000 women entrepreneurs run businesses that generated additional income for their families. Or there’s cocoa cooperative leaders like Soro Kafiehe,
who have honed their business management skills through our Coop Academy program. Conducted in partnership with the International Finance Corporation, TechnoServe and others, the Coop Academy illustrates another way we’re collaborating to empower farmer organizations and support rural development across cocoa-growing regions in West Africa. Initiated by Cargill in 2013, this program provides cocoa-cooperative leaders with in-depth training in business management and sustainability competencies. The Coop Academy also supports women entrepreneurs, helping them set up women’s groups, micro-credit services such as VSLAs, and learn skills to develop additional income-generating activities. It is a fundamental pillar to our sustainability efforts as it truly empowers local leaders. Another of my favorite initiatives is our work to help
farmers like Ouatara Shaka adopt agroforestry practices. Ouatara is one of the more than 220,000 cocoa farmers in our supply chain demonstrating how cocoa farming and forests can co-exist. Together, we’ve planted more than 2.6 million shade trees on farms that, as they grow and develop, have the potential to sequester nearly 137,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2040.
Q: Over the course of 10 years, technology and approaches to sustainability have advanced. How has the Cocoa Promise embraced innovation to enhance its impact, and what technological advancements have played a pivotal role in achieving the program’s objectives?
KennedysConfection.com
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