Got Chocolate? Mondelez Makes a $400M Cacao Investement

Major snack-chocolate maker Mondelez has unveiled “Cocoa Life” – the company’s largest, most comprehensive cacao sustainability effort to date.  As the world’s largest chocolate company, it will invest $400 million over the next ten years to improve the livelihoods and living conditions of more 200,000 cacao farmers and about one million people in cacao farming communities.  Cocoa Life will bring a $100 million new investment to Cote d’Ivoire — the world’s largest cacao producing country — to help 75,000 farmers double their productivity.

Cocoa Life will collaborate with governments, civil society and suppliers with a mission to transform the cacao supply chain.  The company works with third party experts such the United Nations Development Program, World Wildlife Fund and Anti-Slavery International to develop a robust set of principles for success and ways to measure progress.

Cocoa Life is based on Mondelez International’s Cadbury Cocoa Partnership in Ghana, India and the Dominican Republic.  In Ghana, the Partnership has helped create a 20 percent increase in cocoa yields, a 200 percent increase in household incomes and an 80 percent increase in government-backed development projects in the first phases of the project between 2009-2011.  The company continues to expand its reach to more communities in Ghana and extended the partnership to the Dominican Republic in 2011.  In India, the company has been working directly with cacao farmers for 50 years.