Hershey says it is on track to source at least 10 percent of its total global cocoa purchases from certified sources in 2013.
The company also has set benchmarks for reaching 100 percent certified by 2020 as part of its 21st Century Cocoa Plan. Hershey suppliers work with Fair Trade USA, UTZ Certified and Rainforest Alliance to verify that cocoa is grown in line with the highest internationally recognized standards for labor, environment and better farming practices, the company says. As Hershey’s buying volume increases, the company says it will work with other well-established certification organizations to expand its capacity to certify more cocoa farmers globally.
Hershey has committed to scaling its certified cocoa purchases at the following rate:
As of the end of 2012, certified cocoa accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s cocoa supply, according to Hershey.
The Hershey 21st Century Cocoa Plan also includes accelerating and expanding its CocoaLink mobile phone program, which the company launched in 2011 in Ghana with the Ghana Cocoa Board and the World Cocoa Foundation. In 2013, the program will expand into Cote d’Ivoire, a major cocoa-producing country.
CocoaLink uses mobile technology to deliver agricultural and social training to rural cocoa farmers at no cost. Today, more than nine in 10 Ghanaian cocoa farmers have access to a mobile phone. Since launching in Ghana in July 2011, CocoaLink has registered more than 16,000 cocoa farmers — about 35 percent are women — in 550 communities across Ghana’s cocoa growing sector.
The Hershey Learn To Grow farmer and family development center, launched in 2012 in Assin Fosu in Ghana’s central cocoa region, will also play an important role in Hershey’s overall sustainable cocoa plans, the company says. The center, created in partnership with Source Trust, a nonprofit organization that helps farmers improve their livelihoods through better crop yields and quality, will provide Hershey with verified cocoa that can be traced back to the individual farm level.
Hershey Learn To Grow and 25 participating community-based farmer organizations will help improve the living standards of 1,250 cocoa farm families through good agricultural, environmental, social and business practices training; access to improved planting material; and finance for farm inputs with the goal to double productivity yield and farm income over four years, the company says. More than 50 percent of farm family income in this region comes from cocoa.
Hershey’s roadmap to sustainable cocoa also includes programs and initiatives to improve cocoa growing regions around the world over the next seven years. For example, in Mexico, Hershey and cocoa supplier Agroindustrias Unidas de Cacao SA de CV have launched the Mexico Cocoa Project, a 10-year initiative to reintroduce cocoa growing in southern Mexico and help restore the country’s cocoa crop after it had been nearly decimated by the spread of a disease known as frosty pod rot. Through the distribution of disease-tolerant trees, the program intends to improve the livelihoods of more than 1,000 cocoa farmers and their families in the region and quadruple family incomes.
Through its own and partner programs, Hershey estimates the total portfolio of programs encompassed by its 21St Century Cocoa Plan will directly affect 750,000 cocoa farmers and indirectly benefit more than 2 million West Africans through utilization of technology, farmer training on good agricultural practice, cocoa seed nurseries and planting material, farm inputs on credit, village resource centers, malaria prevention, community infrastructure, village school construction, and literacy and health programs.