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Improving Farmer Income
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| Low farmer income remains a persistent problem in cocoa origin countries, with more than two thirds of cocoa farmers living below the poverty line in cocoa-growing African countries. Farmers often end up getting paid a small amount of money for their cocoa beans due to local trading structures, taxes and bean quality. Moreover, farmers often obtain low yields from their cocoa farms due to poor farming practices or limited access to agricultural inputs. |
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| We will actively contribute to improving farmers’ access to finance, especially before the main crop season, to increase their liquidity to invest in improving their farming and living standards. A digital traceability system will be implemented to ensure the transparent and prompt payment of premiums to farmers who comply with Good Agricultural Practices. |
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| Additionally, training on financial literacy will also be available for farmers to acquire extra skills and knowledge that they can apply to inform their farm management and investment decisions. In the long run, we will also actively support government initiatives and programmes for sustainability in origin countries. |
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Benefitting the Farmers and their Community
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| We intend to work with farmers to not only improve the cocoa production process and to support good cocoa, but also to address the critical social challenges in their community. These include education and health, which are key cornerstones for sustainable and long-lasting development. |
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Child Labour
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| Child labour is a common practice in cocoa farms, with over 2.1 million child labourers in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana alone. This deprives children of the chance to develop and advance themselves, while entrenching the household’s impoverishment. |
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We are determined to reduce and eventually eliminate child labour from our supply chain. The foundation of our programme will have an ongoing and effective Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS), which includes four key elements of Prevention, Detection, Remediation and Reporting. We will raise awareness concerning child labour among cocoa farming families, cooperative members and community members to prevent the occurrence of child labour.
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Through CLMRS, facilitators will monitor child labour activities and offer remediation should child labour be found in the system. Remediation activities will include offering school kits or supporting farmers in obtaining birth certificates, so that children can continue to go to school.
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| We will also contribute to the improvement of educational infrastructure in cocoa growing communities by expanding local schools, upgrading school canteens and providing study materials. |
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Health
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| As access to healthcare facilities are often elusive in rural communities, we will promote the health and wellbeing of farmers and their community through hosting vaccination campaigns, distributing medicine boxes and educating farmers on transmittable diseases. This can help to improve the health of the community through increasing their access to basic medication and enhancing their knowledge on disease prevention. |
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Life Insurance
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| We will offer industry pioneering life insurance for farmers. Since farmers are often the main breadwinners in the family, they and their families will face financial instability when farmers are unable to continue work due to illness or death. With a life insurance plan, farmers or their families can receive a sum of money in the event of permanent disability or death of the farmer. |
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Protecting the Environment
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| Forests purify our air, provide food and are vital in mitigating climate change. |
| Yet, cocoa production continues to drive deforestation, with 14 million hectares of forests lost in the top thirty cocoa-producing countries between 2012 and 2016. It is therefore important to address deforestation in cocoa producing countries to ensure a sustainable supply of cocoa. |
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To tackle the complex problem of deforestation, we are collaborating with other stakeholders in the cocoa industry as a signatory of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative. The initiative’s goal is to reduce and mitigate the impact of cocoa on deforestation through promoting environmental protection, natural resource management and the tracking of satellite imagery as well as other geographical information to identify the risks of deforestation. With this information, we will prevent sourcing from deforested regions and support the reforestation of deforested areas.
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| Agroforestry on cocoa farms can increase long-term farm productivity and reduce the need for farmers to encroach on protected areas. We will promote agroforestry on cocoa farms by providing farmers with agroforestry training and suitable shade trees to grow amongst their cocoa crops. This improves income and nutrition, as well as reduces farmers’ reliance on cocoa as their only source of income. |
Providing Responsible Cocoa
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| What is Responsible Cocoa? |
| Cocoa can be defined as responsible when it results from a sustainable cocoa supply chain, from the production of cocoa beans by farmers to the usage of cocoa ingredients by customers. In a sustainable supply chain, the cocoa beans we source and the cocoa ingredients we produce comply with all the sustainability frameworks that we have set forth. By working towards our target of 100% sustainable cocoa by 2030, GCB Cocoa will be ensuring the provision of responsible cocoa to the industry. |
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| We will implement a digital management and traceability system, which will allow us to map and trace the flow of cocoa beans in our supply chain. The system will include mapping farms, tracing the physical flow of beans from farms to our warehouses, and a database containing the farmers’ and their families’ details, as well as information about certification audits. |
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| This will enable us to convey accurate and timely information about activities across our supply chain to customers and suppliers, and guarantee the integrity, accountability and transparency of premium payments to farmers. In addition, the data collected will allow us to monitor and evaluate the impact of our sustainability programme to help us better design future activities. |
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| Future Developments |
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