Hershey And Mars Lead The CocoaAction Initiative

By Karla Paris

Major players in the chocolate industry are looking to advance sustainability in the West African cocoa sector

Hershey and Mars announced last week participation as founding members of CocoaAction, a strategy to co-ordinate cocoa sustainability efforts from the world’s largest cocoa and chocolate companies. The World Cocoa Foundation will act as the convener for the CocoaAction group, which seeks to build a rejuvenated and economically viable cocoa sector for at least 300,000 cocoa farmers and their communities by 2020.  It will initially focus on Ghana and the Ivory Coast, which together provide about 55 percent of the world’s current cocoa supply.

Committed to the cause as of May 20 are ADM, Armajaro, Barry Callebaut, Blommer, Cargill, Ecom, Ferrero, Mondelez International, Nestle, and Olam. CocoaAction focuses on increasing cocoa yields by applying good agricultural practices, providing access to improved planting material and fertilizer — and correctly using them — and community development. The CocoaAction strategy is built on four key principles that align with its partners’ sustainability goals:

• Reinforcing interdependency between productivity-enhancing and community-development interventions
• Commitment to a holistic approach in the form of a productivity and community development package that reflects where industry believes it can make a unique and significant contribution
• Field-level delivery that is customized based on local conditions
• Alignment of company programs and interventions within the framework of the national public-private partnership platforms

Hershey’s 21st Century Cocoa Sustainability Strategy seeks to modernize cocoa farming to increase farmer incomes, attract new farmers, and improve cocoa growing communities.  The 21st Century Cocoa Sustainability Strategy will also help accelerate Hershey’s commitment to purchase 100 percent certified cocoa by 2020 for all chocolate products around the world. The company has developed both innovative Hershey sustainability programs — CocoaLink and Hershey Learn to Grow — as well as large-scale public/private initiatives with partners that include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In 2009, Mars committed to buying 100 percent certified sustainable cocoa by 2020 and continues to make major investments in cocoa research and technology transfer to farmers, while also advocating for greater industry collaboration. The company has been working in partnership with IBM and the USDA to sequence and annotate the cocoa genome.  In 2010, the consortium unveiled the initial results of its program.  The gene has not been patented and the results were released into the public domain, where they are permanently accessible via the Cocoa Genome Database.  By making the results available to the industry and scientific community, the project partners are helping accelerate future cocoa research and the application of knowledge on the ground.