Creating a sustainable cocoa sector that can meet the chocolate industry’s long-term demand for cocoa, while providing economic opportunities to cocoa farmers will require billions of dollars in agricultural investments across research, third-party certification and technology transfer to farmers, according to Mars.
Although many groups and individual companies have made singular investments towards a more sustainable sector, to benefit a significant portion of the world’s five to six million cocoa farmers, Mars believes the industry must work together even more closely to scale up positive impacts for farmers and achieve higher yields without compromising limited natural resources.
Announcing that it invested approximately $30m in cocoa sustainability efforts in 2011, after spending more than $20m annually in the previous two years, Mars is calling for an expansion of previous, smaller scale programmes and a renewed focus on farmer benefit as the industry’s chief priority. Mars will likely match 2011’s investment each year during the next decade.
Earlier this year, the company announced that it had met its 2011 goal of purchasing 10% of its total cocoa supply as certified sustainable, and in 2012 it will exceed its original target of 20%.
Source: Mars
.
© FoodBev Media Ltd 2024