Combatting child labor

WCF announced an initiative, called Children First, at its 2019 Partnership Meeting^[11] in Berlin, Germany that would “eliminate all forms of child labor by 2025”. The initiative has yet to be launched.

Described by one activist^[12] as a “criminal tragedy”, child labor in cocoa production is seen as widespread and has not been reduced significantly over decades.

A 2019 Washington Post investigation noted that “Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor.” The piece reported on children from Burkina Faso working in appalling conditions to harvest cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire.^[13]

A 2020 report by NORC at the University of Chicago concluded that the prevalence of child labor in cocoa production had increased in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.^[14] The Washington Post said the “findings represent a remarkable failure by leading chocolate companies to fulfill a long-standing promise to eradicate the practice from their supply chains.” Commenting on the response to the findings by WCF President Richard Scobey, the Washington Post noted he “identified no industry failures. Instead, he suggested that the goals for reducing child labor may have been too lofty.”^[15]

WCF board member companies have pledged their chocolate is free of child labor but media investigations have repeatedly found child labor in their supply chains.

An investigation in 2022 by Britain’s Channel 4 Dispatches found children as young as 10 working on farms in Ghana supplying the Cadbury’s brand of Mondelēz International.^[16] The investigation went to an address on Mondelēz’s Cocoa Life website in 2022 and discovered child laborers harvesting cocoa without protective clothing. Last Week Tonight host John Oliver^[17] joked: “I don’t know what statement Mondelēz could release in the wake of that other than maybe ‘Honestly, did not think anyone would actually check’”. A CBS television news^[18] investigation in 2023 found children as young as five years old working in the Ghana supply chain of Mars to harvest cocoa for brands such as Snickers and M&Ms.

The industry has set and missed deadlines^[19] to end child labor in cocoa production in 2005, 2008, 2010 and in 2020. The repeated failures to meet their own deadlines have prompted widespread derision.

On Last Week Tonight, host John Oliver said: “At that point, why bother setting a deadline at all? If your friend agrees to meet you for dinner at 7, then pushes it to 7.30, then 8, and then finally says ‘be there in 20, years not minutes,’ it kinda feels like they never had any intention of getting dinner in the first place.”^[20]

Improving farmer income

From 2001 to 2012, the World Cocoa Foundation administered projects to improve farmer income supported in part by funding from United States Agency for International Development.^[21] In 2009 the World Cocoa Foundation was selected to administer a $23 million grant by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at increasing farming household incomes through improved farmer crop productivity, better cocoa quality and crop diversification.^[22] In 2014, a follow-on grant of $8.9 million by the Gates Foundation was also aimed at improving the livelihoods of West African farmers.^[23]

The CocoaAction initiative began in June 2014 and ended in 2019. It was a voluntary cocoa sustainability initiative to improve farmer incomes led by a number of the world's leading cocoa and chocolate companies. The World Cocoa Foundation acted to align the individual sustainability efforts of those companies. By 2019 there were 9 companies participating in CocoaAction: Barry Callebaut, Blommer Chocolate Company, Cargill, Ferrero, The Hershey Company, Mars, Inc., Mondelez International, Nestlé and Olam International.^[24] These are the "world's largest cocoa and chocolate companies" working through CocoaAction "to coordinate their cocoa sustainability efforts" starting with Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana.^[25]

An assessment in 2020 by KPMG said CocoaAction “did not fully reach its targets and realize its vision.”^[26] It had a goal of getting 300,000 farmers to adopt all components of the Productivity Package by 2020 but only 1,165 farmers ended up doing so, representing less than one percent of the target. The target of 1,200 communities reached with the Community Development Package was surpassed; but this figure only relates to the execution of the needs assessment, and not to actual full implementation. KPMG noted that “the overall strategy and objectives of CocoaAction were designed with minimal input from external stakeholders” and that “the origin country governments were not sufficiently involved and therefore no local ownership was established”. It also noted that CocoaAction suffered because “the strength of facilitation by WCF and level of company participation faded over time”.

In 2018, WCF launched CocoaAction Brasil acting in a capacity similar to its role in West Africa sustainability efforts.^[27]

Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, complaining about falling prices and the impact on farmer income, boycotted^[28] the 2022 WCF Partnership Meeting. The 2022 Cocoa Barometer said the environmental and social problems in cocoa production would persist until companies paid farmers substantially more for their cocoa beans.^[29] "We've got new data that shows you cannot have sustainable cocoa without higher prices for farmers. It's just not going to work," Antonie Fountain, director of the VOICE Network, told Reuters.^[30] WCF President Chris Vincent^[31] said cocoa prices were outside WCF’s mandate: “Antitrust laws mean companies cannot discuss pricing together. So, we are clear that we are not part of that price debate.”

Reversing deforestation

In 2018, the World Cocoa Foundation launched the Cocoa & Forests Initiative with support from The Prince of Wales. The Cocoa & Forests Initiative joins the governments of Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire and Colombia,^[32] and thirty-five chocolate and cocoa manufacturers such as founding members The Hershey Company,^[33] Nestle^[34] and Mondelez International.^[35] Two cornerstones of this initiative are farm mapping and tree distribution to increase canopy.

While the World Cocoa Foundation reported progress had been made in the first four years of this initiative,^[36] environmentalist Mighty Earth reported room for improvement.^[37] Said Glenn Hurowitz, CEO of Mighty Earth: “Chocolate companies like Nestlé, Hershey’s, Mondelez and Mars need to stop making empty promises and start working together with governments in the CFI to establish an open and effective joint deforestation monitoring mechanism this year”.^[38]

In a review of the Cocoa & Forests Initiative's first five years, Reuters concluded that it had done too little to stop cocoa from destroying forests. It cited a "lack of sufficient finance, limited traceability, and failure of companies to collaborate at a landscape level" as key issues.^[39]