How a Sustainable Coconut Oil Project Improved Livelihoods for Smallholder Farmers in the Philippines and Indonesia
In Indonesia and the Philippines – world leaders in coconut production and exportation – most farmers are smallholders that struggle with lack of financing and training. Poor agricultural practices led to aging plantations and declining yields and incomes. Beginning in 2011, Cargill identified an opportunity to use its unique position to deliver solutions that would […]
The Partnership Re-Imagining the Rice Value Chain in Nigeria
The Value Chain Development Program (VCDP) is a partnership between the Federal Government of Nigeria, IFAD and Olam. It works to connect smallholder farmers to markets, land, credit and other agricultural support to improve productivity, the quality of their produce and their linkage with agro-processors for the buying of this produce. In turn, this supports […]
How Tech Investments Can Help Smallholders in India
Inequality in income and availability of work between rural and urban areas are large contributors to a country’s overall economic inequality. In India, agriculture still employs more than half of the workforce, but wages are low and with rising education levels many young people no longer aspire to take over the family smallholder farm. Instead, […]
Buy Leadership, Sell Poverty – How Finance Can Boost Value in Agricultural Supply Chains
Financial access and inclusion continue to be sold to farming communities in the world’s leading supply chains at the very price of poverty. How do we reduce this toxic trade-off, why is it taking so long and how does it impact the planet’s future? Tasneem Mayet, Business Fights Poverty Ambassador, shares insights from conversations had […]
The Coffee Price Crisis: How to Support More Sustainable Livelihoods for Farmers
The world is starting to wake up to the difficulties facing coffee farmers. As global prices hover near historic lows, the media has shared stories of coffee growers struggling to keep their farms afloat or abandoning their crops to seek other sources of income. Governments, international organizations, private companies, and nonprofits have made public calls […]
From Suicidal Depression to Social Entrepreneur: Creating a New $bn Industry for Rural Africa
15 years ago I was working in the London advertising industry, promoting products I didn’t believe in for clients who didn’t appreciate it. I ended up asking myself ‘What am I doing with my life?’ The lack of a sense of true purpose and meaning in my life lead me into a downward spiral and, […]
Applying Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Methods in Cocoa Sustainability Program Evaluations
Working out whether or not your sustainability program is having the impact you intend is more complex than you might think. There’s heated debate among academics and practitioners around how to do it best, much of it pointing out that designing a perfect measurement methodology in theory is a lot more straightforward than applying it […]
Six Lessons: Learning from Impact Evaluation in Cocoa Farming
Understanding the impact of development interventions is a complex process. From picking the most suitable measurement and evaluation (M&E) methodology, to designing a suitable plan for implementing it in the field, there might appear to be endless hurdles to the uninitiated. Mondelēz International’s cocoa sustainability program Cocoa Life works with Ipsos as an M&E partner. […]
Doing Nothing is Not an Option
Kristin Komives, ISEAL’s Impacts Director spoke to Arjen, the opening key note at this year’s Global Sustainability Standards symposium, to hear his opinion on what’s needed to have a real positive impact. Companies, and the sustainability standards and NGOs that work with them, need to always be thinking about how they can make a positive […]
The Business Case for Climate-Resilient Agriculture
In 2018, the World Economic Forum ranked extreme weather events and natural disasters as the top two global risks for businesses in terms of likelihood. Modern supply chains rely on complex and increasingly interconnected global networks, leaving both companies and producers around the world vulnerable to climate threats. But climate change is a local issue just as […]
Becoming a Bit More Social
One of the most recent exposés on life along the supply chain came from The Daily Mail. The article revealed that some factory workers in India suffer from horrendous burns when shelling cashew nuts. The burns come from caustic acids that naturally exist between the cashew nut and its outer shell. As is often the […]
Smallholder Coffee Producer Organisations Can Thrive as International Businesses
Coffee is the world’s most popular drink – around 2 billion cups are consumed every day. In the UK alone, we are responsible for approximately 95 million of those. There’s no arguing that it’s big business. For brands whose business is dependent on selling a consistent, high-quality product, having a reliable supply chain is essential. […]
New Ideas are Essential to Ward off Global Water Shortage Threat
Agriculture is a water intensive sector, accounting for 69% of the world’s water abstraction according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. As climate change drives global temperatures higher, the pressure on our water resources will grow. Given there are already over 800 million people who don’t have clean water close to […]
Practical Action and the IKEA Foundation: Can Small Holder Farming Really Work for Some of the World’s Poorest?
Practical Action and the IKEA Foundation have launched a new partnership. Worth €6.4 million, the partnership will help rural people in Kenya earn a decent income from farming. Together, we want to break the cycle of poverty in rural communities. In the Lake Victoria basin of Kenya, farming is the main source of income for […]
Water-Wise Coffee: Making Sustainable Business Profitable in Ethiopia
Community members in the Aleta Wondo district of southern Ethiopia had a problem on their doorstep: their river was polluted. The students of Habaja Primary School, built on its banks, complained about the river’s smell and that they couldn’t use it for gathering water or washing. Their parents in the surrounding communities also struggled, as […]
We Learned Simple Ways to Improve the Local Environment and Our Income
In the Nawa region in Côte d’Ivoire, Mondelēz International’s Cocoa Life partners with Impactum and CARE International to engage women and address climate change and deforestation through a Green Entrepreneurship pilot project. They are helping women learn the knowledge and skills needed to create a sustainable future for cocoa farming communities, and generate income for […]
Forests, Farmers and Cococa: Getting the Balance Right
The world needs forests. They are vital to maintain biodiversity and to help combat climate change. At the same time, forests have suffered since the invention of the plough, as people have cut them down to plant crops for food and cash. The bulldozer just made things worse. Over 70% of the world’s cocoa comes […]
Spearheading Change within the Chocolate Industry to Protect the Forests where Cocoa is Grown
At Mondelēz, we know that real lasting change for the better can only happen via cross-sector collaboration and commitment. That’s why, as a founding member of the Cocoa and Forests Initiative (CFI), we are leading the way with ambitious action plans and calling on the industry to do the same, in order to protect and […]
Highlighting the Plight of Woman Agricultural Workers in Coffee Production #BalanceforBetter International Women’s Day 2019
When Florence Njiraini’s new husband gifted her 1,500 coffee plants on the slopes of Mt. Kenya years ago, she knew almost nothing about farming. Determined to make her plot a success, she set about learning as much as she could, and soon she was employing sustainable growing practices. Njiraini is not only successful as a […]
A Transparent Cuppa – Mapping Our Tea and Coffee Supply Chains
As we enter the second week of Fairtrade Fortnight, it’s a time to celebrate our Fairtrade products and reflect on our hard work building strong relationships with our producers and working on programmes such as empowering women in the supply chain. This year, Fairtrade marks 25 years since it launched in the UK; a pioneering standard, […]