Let's make chocolate fairer!

Our most important tool for improving the income of family farmers is the gebana model. According to this model, family farmers receive 10 per cent of the revenue from the sale of our chocolate in our online shop. This money is paid in addition to the organic and fair purchase price they receive for the cocoa. We distribute this 10 per cent directly to all families each year as an unconditional bonus.

However, we currently only process a fraction of the cocoa we buy from the family farmers into chocolate for our online shop. We sell most of it directly to wholesalers.

That's why the premiums we pay to each family according to our gebana model are still too low. We're giving ourselves one ✅.

For us to be able to offer family farmers a better price, our wholesale customers also have to pay more. We negotiated with them in early 2022 and asked them to pay incrementally higher prices for our cocoa.

Four of them are currently paying higher prices. But that's not enough. We need to pay cocoa producers a better price in order to make chocolate fairer. We'll keep at it and give ourselves two ❌❌

All the family farmers who supply us with cocoa are either certified organic or are in the process of converting to organic farming. We support family farmers and cooperatives in this transition. We also train organic producers and show them how to increase their yields using pruning techniques and compost. In 2024, 1640 producers took part in 230 of these training courses.

Furthermore, we distributed 52'504 cocoa seedlings in 2024 with the aim of rejuvenating the plantations of the family farmers, thereby increasing their yields. We also provided tools for 160 families in 2023 to test, which they can use to open the cocoa pods more efficiently and safely than with a machete.

In Togo, we employ 10 agricultural engineers, or field agents, who work closely together with cocoa producers. They regularly visit the plots, help family farmers with any questions they have about farming and keep in touch with them.

By embracing organic farming practices and implementing more efficient working methods, family farmers are improving their yields while also helping preserve the ecosystem. We're giving ourselves three ✅✅✅.

We check whether the family farmers we work with are clearing forested areas. Our digital database includes information about all the plots, which are electronically mapped using GPS. Every cocoa bean purchase is registered in this database. This gives us complete traceability.

In 2023, we started to compare the cocoa plots with data from Global Forest Watch. This information allows us to identify plots affected by deforestation and reject cocoa from these producers. The initial results show that the risk of deforestation in our cocoa supply chain is low.

Even more importantly in terms of preserving forests and biodiversity, we have been helping family farmers convert their fields to dynamic agroforestry since 2021. This involves combining different plants in a way that increases biodiversity, while the plants enrich the soil with nutrients and provide shade for one another. The family farmers can also harvest products like maize or plantains in addition to cocoa. This gives them an additional income while also reducing the amount of food they need to buy for their own consumption. .

Many families have been practising similar farming methods for years. We support them in bringing even more diversity to their plots, especially through native trees. Together with the family farmers, we have converted 112 plots in Togo to dynamic agroforestry to date.

As we're just getting started with agroforestry and still have a lot of work to do in terms of getting people on board locally, we're only giving ourselves two ✅✅.

By maintaining direct contact with the families and conducting regular visits, we ensure that our supply chain is free from child slavery. Child slavery is the practice of selling children to cocoa producers as workers. Such practices have been flagged in certain countries, such as the Ivory Coast.

However, it's common for the farmers' children to work in the fields, as many families can't afford to hire seasonal harvest workers. In these cases, we can't control what kind of work the children do. According to the convention of the International Labour Organization, working with machetes constitutes hazardous child labour. Moreover, it is also difficult to monitor whether children are sometimes absent from school due to fieldwork. Below you can read about our plans to tackle this problem.

We have not identified any child slavery in our supply chains, hence the ✅. However, our measures against child labour are not yet sufficient, which is why we give ourselves an ❌

Our most important tool in maintaining transparency throughout the supply chain is contact with the cooperatives and family farmers. Our Field Agents pay personal visits to the family farmers on a regular basis. Information on all the families goes into our digital database, where we register all producers and their plots using GPS and satellite images.

We use personalised mobile payment systems to distribute revenue shares to ensure that the money reaches the farmers. This is an effective way to combat widespread corruption.

It's important to remain in close contact with family farmers in order to eliminate child slavery and environmentally harmful farming practices.