ICI board member Barry Callebaut published its Forever Chocolate Progress Report 2017/18, listing the progress the group has made toward its target of making sustainable chocolate the norm by 2025.

Forever Chocolate is based on four targets, to be achieved by 2025, that address the largest sustainability challenges in the chocolate supply chain.

  1. Lift more than 500,000 cocoa farmers out of poverty
  2. Eradicate child labour from its supply chain
  3. Become carbon and forest positive
  4. Have 100% sustainable ingredients in all its products

In the fiscal year 2017/18, Barry Callebaut sourced 44% of cocoa beans through sustainability programmes - through its own Cocoa Horizons, customer programmes and external certification such as UTZ / Rainforest Alliance, Fairtrade and Organic.

In order to lift more than 500,000 farmers out of poverty, Barry Callebaut announced that it is building datasets with detailed location, agronomic, economic and social survey data on the cocoa farms in its supply chain. More than 130,000 farms have already been mapped. These datasets allow Barry Callebaut to ensure that the mapped cocoa farms are not located in protected forest areas. In addition, they allow the group to create tailor-made sustainability programs to help address the key issues of the mapped cocoa farming communities. As part of its work with farmers, the group distributed over 2.1 million young cocoa seedlings, as well as close to 400,000 shade trees.

In 2017/18, 12,395 farmers (+113%) in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, Brazil and Indonesia participated in Barry Callebaut’s Farm Services business and received coaching and other inputs such as tools and seedlings or support to access finance. Furthermore, the group supported cocoa farmers in replanting 281 hectares (+60%) with young cocoa trees, as well as other crops that provide shade and help cocoa farmers to diversify their income.

Eradicating child labour

With the support of the International Cocoa Initiative, Barry Callebaut continues to implement monitoring and remediation systems (CLMRS) designed to eradicate child labour. This constitutes on the ground household and farm visits to survey practices concerning child employment and education in cocoa farming communities. These surveys identify children performing hazardous tasks and allow estimates of the prevalence of the worst forms of child labour to be made. In 2017/18, the group conducted monitoring and remediation in 21 farmer groups covering 12,018 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. Barry Callebaut established that in 2017/18 12% (2016/17: 3.2%) of the farmer groups it directly sources from in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana have systems in place to prevent, monitor and remediate child labour. The monitoring uncovered 4,230 cases of the worst forms of child labour, in all cases children working on their family’s farm. This increase is the result of the coverage of a broader range of farmer groups. All the cases of worst forms of child labour the group found are being remediated.

For a full overview of the 2017/18 Forever Chocolate progress results, please follow this link