Million people to be assisted in cocoa farming

Known as 'Cocoa Life', it is the company's largest, most comprehensive cocoa sustainability effort to date. It will bring a $100 million new investment to Côte d'Ivoire, the world's largest cocoa producing country, to help 75,000 farmers double their productivity.

"I'm proud of this investment in Cocoa Life, a distinctive, holistic approach to cocoa sustainability that will create a cycle of growth from bean to bar," said Tim Cofer, executive vice president and president, Europe, speaking from Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire at the World Cocoa Conference. "Our mission is to create thriving cocoa communities and help secure the future of the cocoa industry."

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

"At the heart of Cocoa Life is our belief in improving the lives of cocoa farmers," said Bharat Puri, senior vice president, Global Chocolate. "We're investing in much more than farming - it's about empowering cocoa communities as a whole so cocoa farming villages become places where people want to live."

Four ways to create win-win

Cocoa Life's approach is to create win-win relationships and benefit farming communities by working with partners in four key ways:

1. Farming: helping farmers improve their yields and livelihoods to earn larger incomes.
   
2. Community: empowering cocoa farming families to create the kind of communities they and their children want to live in, while promoting gender equality.
   
3. Youth: working towards eliminating child labour by helping communities tackle its root causes and making cocoa farming a more attractive profession for the next generation.
   
4. Environment: protecting the landscapes in which cocoa is grown to maintain eco-systems and provide viable environments and farming land for future generations.
   

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

The programme reflects the group's core values and builds on its previous commitments, including its goal to sustainably source 100% of its European coffee by 2015 and its 'Coffee Made Happy' initiative to invest at least $200 million to empower one million coffee farming entrepreneurs by 2020.

About Mondelez International

On 1 October 2012, the former Kraft Foods Inc changed its name to Mondelez International and spun-off some brands into a new company called Kraft Foods Group. Kraft Foods Group focuses on the North American foods business. Mondelez International focuses on the global snacks business, including several billion-dollar brands such as Cadbury and Milka chocolate, Jacobs coffee, LU, Nabisco and Oreo biscuits, Tang powdered beverages and Trident gums. It has annual revenue of approximately $36 billion and operations in more than 80 countries. (Source: Wikipedia - Kraft Foods)

For more information, go to www.mondelezinternational.com and www.facebook.com/mondelezinternational.