Cocoa trader Touton has partnered with Ghanaian government agency Cocobod to curb deforestation in Ghana, where cocoa is the main driver of 3.2% of protected forest loss each year.
Significant progress is being made to combat unlawful child labor, but Indonesia’s declining crop and the falling cocoa price remain major challenges, says Mars' head of procurement.
Nestlé’s child labor prevention system in its Cocoa Plan will cover around half of the company’s supply by 2020, but full scale up may never be possible, says its public affairs director.
World food prices rose slightly last month driven by higher vegetable oils prices, and palm oil in particular, according to the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Global palm oil production is expected to grow by 6m tonnes this year, after output was hit hard in 2016 due to the strong effects of the lingering El Niño weather system from the previous year.
Traceability from farm to first purchase, common definitions of protected areas and paying farmers a living income are three ways stakeholders say can help end cocoa-driven deforestation in West Africa, which is threatening endangered species.
Nigeria is the world’s sixth largest cocoa producer, but has scope to significantly boost its output and processing capacity, according to a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).
