The Rainforest Alliance is strengthening its pioneering cocoa certification program, which is the world’s largest scale initiative to drive more sustainable cocoa farming. Key priorities of the cocoa strategy are assurance, shared responsibility, supply chain transparency, and profitability and resilience.
With the support of the cocoa industry, the Rainforest Alliance is taking this unprecedented action to facilitate greater accountability and oversight in the cocoa sector. The organization’s goal is to improve the economic, social, and environmental conditions of the cocoa industry – beginning with the millions of smallholder farmers in the first mile of cocoa production.
Phase 3 of our Cocoa Assurance Plan invites new groups from West Africa to become certified, provides an updated policy for farm and supply chain certification, and further addresses farm encroachment in protected areas and deforestation.
This Q&A has been developed to provide guidance to certificate holders and certification bodies with regards to the Measures to Strengthen the Cocoa Sector.
This policy sets out specific implementation requirements for certificate holders at both producer and supply chain actor levels (Certification Criteria) and for reinforcing the assurance process (Assurance Process Rules).
Information about a new approach we will implement in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana beginning in June 2020 to strengthen assurance of our certification system.
The Rainforest Alliance’s Africa Cocoa Fund (ACF) is a three-year, $5 million fund to support cocoa farmers and help preserve the local landscapes in West and Central Africa.
Farmer poverty is an enduring issue in the cocoa sector. Our 2020 Sustainable Agriculture Standard addresses this critical issue from many angles, including the introduction of Origin Matching Mass Balance in cocoa.
Through this project, we will bring together cocoa-producing families, governments, and the private sector to improve livelihoods for cocoa farmers, increase tree cover, and help reduce national and corporate GHG emissions.
This Q&A has been developed to provide guidance to certificate holders and certification bodies with regards to the Measures to Strengthen the Cocoa Sector.
The Rainforest Alliance is transitioning all cocoa traceability to our new digital platform MultiTrace.
Supply Chain Certificate Holders can use the default conversion rates of some Rainforest Alliance Certified crops in the tables below to indicate their volumes.
