Barry Callebaut claims sustainability progress with latest Cocoa Horizons report

Barry Callebaut's Cocoa Horizons scheme has been active in Ivory Coast for the past decade. Pic: Barry Callebaut
Barry Callebaut has released its latest Cocoa Horizons report, revealing key progress on its activities targeting support for producing nations in Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Brazil, Ecuador, and Indonesia, writes Neill Barston.
The annual study, which was established by the Swiss-headquartered business in 2015, was created with a goal of driving positive change within supply chains, through promoting sustainable farming techniques, environmental protection measures and wider support for communities.
As the company noted, it has made progress for its Cocoa Horizons project (which it leads itself around the world, but operated in the largest cocoa growing market of Ivory Coast with partners Touton, Sucden and ETG), under three core areas. These include scaling up farm services and introduced income diversification opportunities to empower farmers and enhance their livelihoods.
Furthermore, the business stated it also set out to improve child protection measures and promote women’s financial inclusion, which is seen by many industry observers as being vital to enhancing the overall health of communities.
The company has also placed emphasis on developing agroforestry initiatives that aim to build climate resilience, with it being among the signatories of the Cocoa and Forests initiative that was released in 2017, which recently underwent a ‘2.0’ enhancement designed to scale-up operations.
Notably, its Cocoa Horizons project has been operated in tandem with its wider sustainability work under its Forever Chocolate programme launched in 2016 that has aimed to help lift hundreds of thousands of farmers out of poverty through a combination of support actions for community development. As the company acknowledged, conditions on the ground have proved notably challenging with elevated cocoa prices, yet it has set out a series of actions by 2030 under that programme.
These include targeting gaining a living income for farmers, working to deliver EUDR regulations on deforestation, as well as seeking to enhance human rights through focusing on greater traceability of farm mapping, and supporting upcoming corporate due diligence legislation designed to support workers throughout supply chains.
This comes against a concerning backdrop of continuing issues of child labour within cocoa communities, with the last major studies of child labour in West Africa from several years ago, from civil society organisations found that 2.1 million children were still exposed to hazardous labour practices. This has been directly linked to underlying poverty, and farmers’ inability to pay adult labourers, instead relying on young family members to make up the shortfall.
As has previously been reported, many labourers within the sector still earning well under UN-defined poverty levels of under $2 a day, which Barry Callebaut, and other key industry players, have set out to address in its overall strategies, working alongside governments in the region, as well as civil society organisations.
In terms of its Cocoa Horizons study, Barry Callebaut stated that its venture had demonstrated the resilience of the farming networks that it deals with around the world, with a total of 356,011 farmers registered with the project.
Moreover, the study showed that farmers were also navigating climate-related shocks and wider economic instability in the cocoa market, as well as major regulatory changes including the aforementioned EUDR, and wider sustainability legislation presently being tackled by the EU Commission. The report noted that 91% of its farmers are now fully mapped, that has brought the company closer to achieving its full traceability goals.
Notably, the report claimed that the number of farmers above the World Bank’s International poverty line grew by 37%, reaching 68% of those that it has engaged with. Furthermore, other key statistics included pre-harvest labor services expanding, covering over 40,000 hectares, with farmers seeing measurable productivity improvements. Savings and loans schemes within communities also grew significantly, with nearly 70% of them being women members, aiming to save and invest a total of CHF 2 million into their communities.
Another key statistic concerned its Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), promoting agroforestry by rewarding farmers for successful tree maintenance, distributing CHF 720,817 and further supporting sustainable agroforestry practices.
Farming investment
Significantly, the report highlighted the fact that many agricultural workers had lacked the resources to make financial investment in their farms, and lacked the resilience to withstand extreme weather events that had been a notable factor in recent years. As Confectionery Production has reported, this has led to a cocoa deficit on a global level, that has pushed up prices around the world (to levels of around $12,000 on Futures markets), though this has not filtered down to ‘farm gate’ payment level in West Africa, despite several comparatively small pay rises in the past year in the light of considerable upward movement in prices.
In its response, Barry Callebaut’s teams have continued to look at how they can impact agriculture. Its Subsidised Farm Services labour teams have been put into action, equipped with specialised tools provided much-needed support for pre-harvest activities like pruning, directly contributing to productivity gains and reducing labor costs for farmers.
Furthermore, it has continued to promote agroforestry in West Africa and across the globe, and has reportedly distributed millions of shade trees and rewarding tree health through Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES), targeting improvements in biodiversity, as well as assisting communities adapt to climate change impacts.