100% sustainably sourced cocoa
Learn about our commitment to sustainable cocoa farming practices.
To make great chocolate, you need great cocoa.
But life can be challenging where cocoa is grown.
That’s why we developed the Nestlé Cocoa Plan:
better farming, better lives – and better cocoa.
Our 2022 Report will be published later this year.
Here are some of the specific activities we undertook and the progress we made in 2021:
Better Farming
- Over 90,000 Nestlé Cocoa Plan farmers were trained in good agricultural practices (GAPs), including pruning, pest and disease control, weeding, shade management and harvest management.
- A third of farmers (33%) were considered to have adopted at least four GAPs (including pruning) to an acceptable standard.
- 44% of farmers had adopted pruning, i.e. cutting back unproductive branches to boost the cocoa tree’s overall yield and resilience.
Better Lives
- To prevent and address child labour risks, the Child Labour Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) cumulatively supported 156,974 children in Côte d’Ivoire since its launch (up from 127,550 in 2020).
- The CLMRS also benefitted 2,809 children in Ghana (up from 2,399 in 2020).
Better Cocoa
- At Nestlé Confectionery in the UK & Ireland, we've used 100% certified cocoa since 2015.
- In 2021, the Nestlé Cocoa Plan expanded to cover 152,236 farming families (up from 124,053 in 2020).
- We made notable progress towards our Forest Positive strategy, including our drive to achieve deforestation-free cocoa by 2025. Though overviewed in our Annual Progress Report, on this specific point more detailed information is available in our Towards Forest Positive Cocoa Progress Report 2022.
More detailed information can be found here.
Proudly Rainforest Alliance Certified
Since 2016, all of the cocoa we’ve sourced for the Smarties chocolate you enjoy here in the UK & Ireland has been certified which means it is being grown more sustainably.
We are proud of our work with the Rainforest Alliance that goes beyond certification of cocoa beans into other impact areas. Read more about this on the Rainforest Alliance’s website.
Our Partners
In fact, the Rainforest Alliance is not the only organisation we work with on our journey to make cocoa more sustainable.
To make real and lasting change requires collaboration. A number of organisations have come together to deliver the Nestlé Cocoa Plan. Find out more by clicking on the partner links below.
Our innovative new income accelerator programme
In January 2022, we launched a new plan to build on our longstanding efforts to tackle child labour risks in cocoa production. At its centre is an innovative income accelerator programme, which aims to improve the livelihoods of cocoa-farming families and incentivize enrolment of children in school, while advancing regenerative agriculture practices and gender equality.
A cash incentive will be paid to the cocoa-farming households for certain activities to accelerate change. This new plan also includes initiatives to transform the global sourcing of cocoa to achieve full traceability and segregation of cocoa products.
It offers a novel approach to help farmers and their families steadily and sustainably build economic stability. It rewards cocoa-farming families not only for the quantity and quality of cocoa beans they produce but also for the benefits they provide to the environment and local communities.
Building on the learnings of an initial pilot in 2020 with 1,000 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, a large-scale test with 10,000 families started in 2022. We will assess the results of the test phase and adapt where necessary, before aiming to reach all cocoa-farming families in Nestlé’s global cocoa supply chain by 2030.
Feedback and input from farmers and farmer cooperatives, as well as ongoing data collection and evaluation by third parties, will be used to inform, modify and improve the programme as it scales up to more communities. To learn more about the income accelerator programme, click here.
To learn more about the Nestlé Cocoa Plan, visit www.nestlecocoaplan.com
