[Food IngredientsFirst] Sustainable cocoa: Industry leverages digital technology to target deforestation and labor issues

Tracking carbon fluctuations and deforestation
Embracing a technology-driven approach to sustainability, companies in the cocoa industry are actively investing in digital solutions to confront the challenges.

Andrew Brooks, head of Cocoa Sustainability, ofi, explains: “Research and investment into digital climate solutions are crucial to meet our sustainability goals.”

“We’ve partnered with NGIS to utilize Earth Engine and Google Cloud to develop a new AI-power Carbon Stock Monitoring and Measurement tool. We’re able to use the high-quality data needed to track carbon fluctuations across our global sourcing countries.”  

At the same time, Ferrero is committed to achieving traceability back to the farm level in its cocoa supply chain. The company shares: “For cocoa, our company aims for traceability back to farm level and uses technology like Sourcemap to monitor potential deforestation and ecosystem conversion in its supply chain.”

Cargill is also scaling its tech-driven monitoring approaches to farming: “Our work to protect forests includes the use of innovative GPS polygon technology and satellite data to see and quickly address possible deforestation risks and land use changes across farms.”

“To date, we have mapped 72% of the farmers in our direct supply chain, helping to protect forests today and for years to come,” Clancy details.

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