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Posted: 09 Apr 2025
A large proportion of cocoa farmers earn an income below the extreme poverty line. Low yields on small plots of land keep cocoa farmers in a state of poverty, and as a result many cocoa farmers lack both the means to invest in improvements to their farms and the means to send their children to school and to hire professional farmhands.
Barry Callebaut’s philosophy is to provide the needed support to empower cocoa farmers to leverage their cocoa farming expertise, to improve their yields and increase their financial resilience by diversifying their income.
A typical farmer that has reached a living income has on average 5 hectares of land dedicated to cocoa with a yield of more than 600 kg/ha. This is a different reality for the average cocoa farmer, who cultivate 3.8 hectares of land dedicated to cocoa with an average yield of 450 kg/ha. Even if cocoa prices increase, not all cocoa farmers will earn an income above the living income benchmark.
Lifting farmers out of poverty and getting them on a trajectory towards a living income requires deep insights into the components of their income. Barry Callebaut have conducted in-depth research into cocoa farmer incomes in three major cocoa-producing companies (Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana) with the intention of supporting the development and implementation of interventions.
Their living income approach is structured around these interventions, leading to a smart mix for the cocoa farmers they work with:
Barry Callebaut is aiming for a consistent poverty reduction perspective, and a living income-enabling farming model. The first step towards this is to support the lifting of cocoa farmers out of poverty, measured against the International Poverty Line threshold.
Their goal is to lift 500,000 cocoa farmers in their supply chain out of poverty by 2025, and to mobilise key stakeholders around a transformative cocoa farming model generating living income by 2030.
Find out more about Callebaut’s work to improve the lives of cocoa farmers and their communities at Callebaut.com.
Earlier this year, the Barry Callebaut factory in Belgium closed for several months following a salmonella-positive chocolate production lot. While the factory has re-opened and our Callebaut stocks are improving again, the closure had a significant ripple effect on the chocolate industry and our other brands continue to be in high demand.
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