Olam Food Ingredients, OFI are developing their relationship further with Mondelēz International with a new initiative in Brazil. The two companies which had previously announced a joint venture to develop the worlds largest sustainable Cocoa farm in Indonesia has now joined forces with Partnerships for Forests (P4F) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) to create a joint scalable initiative to tackle deforestation in Pará Brazil.
Deforestation rates in Pará are the highest of any Brazilian state
OFI Press release
P4F has an interesting business proposition. One of their goals is to help private and public companies extract a balanced value from their investment in deforestation.
In other words, cutting down forests is often more profitable than not cutting them down, so to halt deforestation the equation needs to be altered so that it becomes a more viable solution for all parties. As they put it:
“By creating market-ready ‘Forest Partnerships’ that offer an attractive balance of risks and benefits for the private sector, public sector and communities, the programme aims to mobilise significant investment, principally from the private sector.”
Partnership 4 Forests website
It is an eight-year programme funded by the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) and the Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). P4F operates throughout Central, East, and West Africa, South East Asia, and Latin America.
The Nature Conservancy take a science-led approach to solve climate issues. I highly recommend visiting their website if you like to go deeper into understanding how projects are technically structured. As a side note, I really liked their carbon footprint calculator.
Here is how they describe themselves.
The Nature Conservancy is tackling the dual threats of accelerated climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss. Science determines where we focus and equity guides how we achieve lasting results. Grounded by decades of local on-the-ground experience, we maximize our ability to affect change by bringing together real-world solutions, policy expertise, sustainable financing and collaborative partnerships.
The Nature Conservancy Website
This looks like a good move for OFI, Mondelēz and the Pará region. I hope the company publishes progress reports.
The official press release follows:
olam food ingredients (ofi), a global leader in natural and sustainable ingredients and solutions, Mondelēz International, Partnerships for Forests (P4F) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) (“the partners”) have announced they are scaling up efforts to halt deforestation and restore degraded land in Pará, Brazil, helping to bring 48,0001 hectares of land under sustainable management by 2023.
Deforestation rates in Pará are the highest of any Brazilian state. 1.2 million hectares of forest have been lost in the last five years alone, mainly as forest is cleared to make way for cattle farming2. Together, the partners are tackling this by promoting cocoa agroforestry – where cocoa is grown alongside native trees and fruits – as a more profitable alternative. The large-scale project aims to restore lost tree cover and help farmers to diversify and grow their livelihoods. It is also intended to encourage other industry players to replicate the model and help accelerate progress towards protecting this vital landscape.
The project is an expansion of a successful first phase which recently won Nature-Based Project of the Year at the Business Green Leaders Awards 2021. More than 250 farmers have already signed a zero-deforestation agreement, 16,000 hectares of land have been brought under sustainable management, and 1.6 million Brazilian reais of subsidized credit have been unlocked for implementation and management of agroforestry.
The next phase of the project will scale up further to cover 700 farmers and 48,000 hectares of land by 2023. Farmers and rural technicians will get added support and training on cocoa agroforestry through a Technical Assistance Hub co-funded by Mondelēz, P4F, Humanize Institute, GIZ and Extreme E. They will also be supported by ofi and Mondelēz with premiums for their cocoa in exchange for zero deforestation and reforestation commitments and get help accessing credit through a partnership with Banco da Amazônia.
M. Sathyamurthy, President of ofi‘s cocoa business in Latam & Americas, said:
“As a leading supplier of cocoa beans and cocoa ingredients, if we are to create a sustainable future for cocoa farmers and our planet, we must not only put an end to deforestation in the Amazon, we have to help reverse it. Together with our partners, we are demonstrating how proven agroforestry techniques can restore precious forest and generate economic opportunities for farmers, supporting them to be agents of positive change. The project is also an example of how the most granular level of Olam’s sustainability insights platform, AtSource Infinity, can deliver transformational impact at scale for communities as well as landscapes, by promoting education and giving female farmers the training and tools, they need to diversify their incomes.
“This next phase will go even further, addressing various bottlenecks that we know are preventing farmers from adopting sustainable practices from problems accessing credit to a lack of skilled labor and technical assistance.”
Barbara Ferreira, Senior Project Officer at Partnerships for Forests, said:
“The pilot phase addressed the main challenges faced by farmers in an integrated manner by increasing access to the value-chain actors, helping to unlock credit and promoting rural technical assistance. This is all thanks to a multidisciplinary partnership established between investors, industry and other partners to align strategy, define priorities and find solutions together. The second phase aims to provide scale and sustain positive outcomes for the long term with an increased focus on the role of women in agroforestry, training rural technicians and equipping young people to provide specialized labor services.”
José Otavio Passos, Amazon Director at TNC Brazil, said:
“Cocoa agroforestry has been proven to be more than an environmental solution. It is a better way of generating income for families living in the countryside and also an economic model capable of keeping the land healthy in the long term. Precisely because it brings social and economic benefits, in addition to environmental ones, this project is a proven Nature Based Solution with concrete results”.
In partnership with Mondelēz International, ofi will continue to collect data on the project and measure its impact through the Olam Farmer Information System (OFIS). The app collects detailed productivity and socio-environmental data on each farmer participating in the project and delivers tailored advice to help them improve productivity and biodiversity. The data will also be made available to ofi‘s customers through AtSource.
The project is being expanded with the support of a new investment platform funded by Instituto Humanize, GIZ, and electric vehicle racing series Extreme E.
