Last year, I shared my vision for how Nestlé can support a just transition. We’re committed to helping farmers transition to regenerative practices that will have a positive impact on the environment and community. Part of our vision of Generation Regeneration is that farmers won’t bear the cost of changing practices alone. We’re accelerating this effort first in cocoa, a crop that requires long-term efforts to address root causes of inequity and child labor risks.
Our efforts over many years have helped, but more is needed. We are launching a holistic approach to getting kids in school, accelerating farmer income and supporting families. We expect our new initiative to triple our annual investment in cocoa sustainability, to more than USD 1 billion over the next decade. More importantly, our fresh approaches are designed to make lasting, positive change. We believe these three key criteria for our program can help transform cocoa farming:
1. Innovate: use incentives differently
When I first visited a community school in Cote d’Ivoire, I met the mother of a recently enrolled student. She told me that she was happy to have her daughter in school… as long as their income could afford it. It was a rational calculation for them, and it made our mission clear. We could help support positive outcomes for the families by offering immediate incentives for keeping children in school. Now, our income accelerator program provides financial incentives to families that help them build their income and keep their children in school. The program rewards cocoa-farming families for practices that help them increase their incomes and benefit the environment and community. Those incentives start building long-term changes. Ultimately, those changes contribute to better farmer income, sustainability, and social impact, while providing farmers and their families an immediate financial benefit. Incentive payments also contribute to gender equity because we divide payments equally between the farmer and the farmer’s spouse. That split creates more ways that the money is reinvested in education and community benefits.
2. Collaborate: build solutions together, grounded in local realities
Solutions must be localized. At Nestlé, that’s a principle we apply in main ways. Our R&D facility in Abidjan, for example, emphasizes seedling research for local conditions rather than only ‘importing’ solutions that may not be appropriate in the local context. The facility also works closely with regional universities and startups to ensure that it’s grounded in the local innovation ecosystem. By the same token, our approaches for social impact and sustainability stem from our local teams, as well as on-the-ground partners and subject matter experts.