Celebrating commitments
The highlight of the closing ceremony was the presentation of several sector ánd company commitments on achieving living wages and living incomes. Here are a few of the most remarkable ones.
Taylors of Harrogate: living wages and incomes in the whole supply chain
“As an 130 years old family company, we want the way we do business to have a positive effect on the world. Our buyers regularly travel to visit the farms and co-operatives that supply our tea and coffee. We’re proud to be founding members of the Ethical Tea Partnership, and we have a strong relationship with IDH. We’ve established a sustainable sourcing approach several years ago already, but we realised that we have to do something more. So we’ve adopted a new approach, which is pretty much focussed on living wage and living income. Our commitment is that we are going to do everything we possibly can to pay a living wage and a living income in our whole supply chain by 2025. We know it will be a tough journey, but we stand for it. We are going to start dialogues with our producers to see how we can bridge the gaps in the coming years.”
Ian Brabbin, Head of Tea at Taylors of Harrogate
Olam: living incomes for 150,000 cocoa farmers
‘Our vision is of an environmentally positive, professionalised and quality focused cocoa supply chain comprised of farmers who are earning a living income and whose children have access to education. Our key goal is to have 150,000 farmers earning a living income, as well as to eliminate child labour in 2030. We support the efforts of the governments of Ghana an Cote d’Ivoire to raise the minimum price of cocoa. Price is a decisive factor for the farmers, but we will also continue our efforts in raising yields, help farmers to diversify their sources of income and support women associations. For us it is absolutely clear that we can only do this if we further invest in very strong partnerships with all of our stakeholders.’
Andrew Brooks, Head of Cocoa Sustainability Olam Africa
Raphael Audoin Rouzeau from Puratos
Beyond Chocolate: living incomes for the cocoa farmers
´The chocolate sector is a national pride in Belgium. But this does not mean we’re always proud of our supply chain. At Puratos, a business to business chocolate brand, we have been reflecting on sustainability and farmer incomes for several years now. We’ve decided that we want to be in control of our impact, and integrated our supply chain. We have invested in direct contacts with producers and farmer communities.
In 2018 Beyond Chocolate was created in Belgium, and of course Puratos joined this sector initiative. It´s a broad coalition of traders, chocolate companies and all kind of other stakeholders. Without underestimating the multiple challenges, the whole sector – from cocoa procurement to retail – is today committed to an ambitious target: achieving a living income for cocoa farmers at the latest in 2030. We are also announcing a European sector of this initiative. At Puratos we are very proud of this meaningfully initiative.’
Raphael Audoin Rouzeau, Global Cocoa Sourcing Manager at Puratos on behalf of Beyond Chocolate.
Tea: from Malawi to a regional approach
‘Five years ago we started the Malawi Tea 2020 agreement. We went through all the negotiations, and now we can say there has been a lot of progress and that we have learned a lot of lessons. From my colleague from Taylors of Harrogate you have already heard how much all of this has been internalised within the tea companies. So now it is time to start a new initiative. ETP and IDH are going to build on all our experiences in Malawi, and will be extending our collaborations to the whole of the key countries where tea is grown for our members. We will be working together to help realise living wages and address income gaps in those countries. One of the important things we want to do with this new collaboration is that we will be making sure that we really support individual supply chain action by companies as well.’
Sarah Roberts, Executive Director of the Ethical Tea Partnership