Hershey Doubling Down on Commitment to Ethical Cocoa Supply Chain - Seite 2

Hershey’s expanded Cocoa For Good program doubles down on its four key areas of Nourishing Children, Empowering Youth, Prospering Communities and Preserving Ecosystems. This encompasses:

• Improving farmer incomes: To help increase farmers’ income from cocoa, Hershey is investing in farmer training to enable growing more cocoa on less land and improving productivity, which helps address poverty, the main driver of labor issues in cocoa. Hershey is also helping farmers diversify their incomes with alternative crops and other income-generating activities as well as paying farmers a premium for their cocoa. In addition to these efforts to raise incomes, Hershey is paying the Ivorian and Ghanaian Living Income Differential (LID), a premium paid to the government that seeks to help support farmer income.
  
  
• Elimination of child labor, including the worst forms such as forced and slave labor: Hershey is expanding its Child Labor Monitoring and Remediation Systems to assess more than 125,000 children and provide any remediation that is necessary, such as providing birth certificates so children can stay in school.  This is a 350% increase in the number of children being helped through our CLMRS work since 2018. To date, this CLMRS work has found zero instances of forced labor within the segment of the Hershey cocoa supply chain assessed.
  
  
• Expanding the ViVi school feeding program: In partnership with Project Peanut Butter and the Ivorian National Nutrition Council, Hershey is opening a second ViVi nutritional supplement factory in Cote d’Ivoire and will begin distributing the food to 25,000 Ivorian school children this year. ViVi, made from locally grown peanuts, has been effective in Ghana to reduce anemia and improve educational performance.
  
  
• Strengthening zero-deforestation commitment through Cocoa & Forest Initiative: Hershey is increasing coverage of its satellite monitoring systems and mapping 100% of the West African cocoa farms in its supply chain, ensuring real-time and accurate monitoring. Additionally, the company is supporting new solutions for farmers to obtain affordable land titles to promote farm rehabilitation and increase shade-grown cocoa.

“We are committed to making these important changes, and while we know it will take time, we are confident that together with our communities, suppliers, governments and industry partners we can make a positive difference to reassure consumers who love our products and look to us for moments of goodness in their lives,” said Hershey’s Chris Abbott, Senior Director of Cocoa Strategic Sourcing.