Nestlé CSR - The Cocoa Plan for Côte d’Ivoire
Last updated 11/17/2009 8:31:15 AM
Nestle CSR - The Cocoa Plan for Cote dIvoire
Last week Nestlé chairman Peter Brabeck-Letmathe expressed a greater need and a broader strategy to reducing food insecurity at the Private Sector Forum in Milan.
The Forum addressed the challenges, risks and possible drivers of a future food crisis, while aiming to identify concrete solutions in which companies can contribute.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has estimated that the world will need until 2050 to boost agricultural investment by US$83bn (nearly CHF 84bn) a year to feed a growing population. Most of the money will come from the private sector, from small farmers to big agribusinesses.
Addressing this, Nestlé announced it will invest more than US$100m (around CHF 110m) over the next decade to farmers in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana – which together account for 60% of the world's cocoa output – to supply 38 million higher quality, disease-resistant plants to rejuvenate their farms and increase productivity.
The Cocoa Plan, announced in October, aims to help address the key issues facing the cocoa farming communities that Nestlé works with.
Although The Plan is not a quick fix for the challenging cocoa situation, it is an important and significant part of broad, collaborative efforts to improve the cocoa supply chain and the lives of cocoa farmers and communities.
This includes improving the quantity and quality of yields by providing 12 million stronger productive plantlets and increasing farmer training by teaching more efficient methods. In addition, Nestlé will commit to improve the supply chain in buying beans from farms using sustainable practices and help cooperatives speed up the process from farm to export.
In working with partner organisations, such as the International Cocoa Initiative and the World Cocoa Foundation, Nestlé also aims to address issues such as child labour and poor access to healthcare and education.
Brabeck-Letmathe highlighted at the Forum that: "We have to be aware that the challenge we are facing in the years to come goes far beyond the food insecurity for the one billion people that go hungry to bed. We therefore have to be quite bold when discussing solutions."
He added that there are five major challenges to overcome long-term global food insecurity. The first is producing the necessary quantities of basic calories and proteins in a sustainable way, which is also within the restrictions of water and arable land.
Secondly, it is necessary to generate reliable incomes for farmers, avoiding the approach with increasing subsidies and artificially high prices. Next, he believed that focusing on the affordability of food for low-income consumers is necessary. Highlighting the quality of food, including safety, is also an important role for industry.
Finally, with accessibility – in supplying food at the right time, in the right form, at the right place – is another important task for companies. But more importantly, Brabeck-Letmathe felt that the most important challenge to sustainable production of food is water. In finding ways to overcome an unsustainable use of water in farming.
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