CFI PROGRESS AND PARTNERSHIP IN A CHANGING COCOA LANDSCAPE
Nathalie Faulkner, Cocoa Life Sustainability & Data Manager and CFI Lead, Mondelēz International
Today we have published our annual Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) Progress Report, sharing an update on key activities from the CFI reporting period of October 2023 to September 2024, and how we have been supporting CFI’s ambitions through Cocoa Life.
Mondelēz International has been an active partner of CFI since its inception in 2017, working closely alongside the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and about 36 other world-leading chocolate and cocoa companies to help decrease deforestation and help restore forest areas.
By the end of the CFI reporting period in September 2024 in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, around 192,600 farms were mapped, deforestation risk assessments conducted across approximately 356,000 hectares, and close to 1,134,000 multi-purpose trees distributed for on-farm planting via agroforestry1. In addition, approximately 506,000 cocoa seedlings were distributed in Ghana2. We also offered targeted farming practices, providing Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) trainings to around 63,0003 farmers in Côte d’Ivoire and approximately 22,6002 in Ghana.
We continued our CFI approach of piloting, learning and scaling – investing in partnerships and driving ‘smart innovations’ through advanced farm mapping technology, agroforestry techniques and on- & off-farm tree planting.
Key projects include:
- Supported activities to help restore forests by working with partners to implement the Modified Taungya System (MTS). From October 2023 to September 2024, ~170 farmers in Ghana were trained in MTS2. In 2024, we expanded the MTS initiative to a new region.
- Planted more trees promoting agroforestry as part of our Carbon Booster Project to help sequester carbon from the atmosphere aiming to have a bigger positive climate impact.
- Continued to increase the understanding of our impact on forests through farm mapping, leveraging remote sensing data through our ongoing partnership with Satelligence, and applying learnings to help reduce carbon emissions.
- Worked in collaborative action across landscapes through stakeholder landscape initiatives including the Asunafo-Asutifi partnership in Ghana that seeks to address deforestation in an area prioritized for intervention.
- In the last year, MDLZ teams also focused on accelerating climate action efforts, achieving approximately a 12% reduction in end-to-end GHG emissions across our value chain compared to 2018. This has been achieved in part due to the important contribution made by Cocoa Life’s actions to help protect and restore forests in cocoa regions4.