The move will contribute more than $1M in Fairtrade premium funds for cocoa farmers to invest in their farms, business organisations and communities, said the firm.
Barry Parkin, Mars global chocolate vice president, said: “This agreement is a big step towards fulfilling our shared mission to empower farmers to build vibrant, sustainable livelihoods, and we’re very excited to work with Fairtrade on ways to enable commodity certification to scale across the entire industry.”
Transform the lives
Rob Cameron, ceo of Fairtrade International said the initiative would transform the lives of thousands of small-scale cocoa farmers.
“Through Fairtrade certification, we’ve seen how farmers’ organisations can use the additional investment from Fairtrade cocoa sales to tackle the problems they face – from projects to improve their farming methods and the quality of the cocoa they produce, to schooling for their children and health facilities in their villages,” he said.
In recent years, Fairtrade labels have appeared on both Cadbury’s Dairy Milk brand and Nestlé’s Kit Kat.
Meanwhile, global production of cocoa is about 3.5Mt a year. Demand will rise to an estimated 4.5Mt within nine years, according to a statement from Mars.