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.
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.
Our 2020 Certification Program includes two financial requirements for the buyers of Rainforest Alliance Certified commodities: the Sustainability Differential (SD) and Sustainability Investments (SI). For cocoa, we will require a minimum SD of $70 per MT as of July 2022.
An explanation of the Rainforest Alliance full mutual recognition to ensure traceability.
The race is on to meet the requirements of the European Union Regulation on Deforestation-free Products (EUDR) by December 30, 2024—and certified coffee and cocoa companies can consider the Rainforest... View more
Find out how our systems and offerings are primed to help certified cocoa and coffee supply chain partners show compliance with EUDR requirements.
Photos of cocoa pods and beans, and cocoa farmers. Also includes shareable social media graphics.
These instructions contain information for certificate holders to implement the requirements related to the collection of National Identification (ID) numbers for farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana,... View more
Read about the impact of climate change and extreme weather events – like El Nino – on cocoa production worldwide.
SA-P-AF-6
This policy sets out specific implementation requirements for certificate holders at both producer and supply chain actor levels (Certification requirements) and for reinforcing the... View more
