Reflecting on 20 years of impact: lessons, innovation & the future of cocoa sustainability

ArticlesSep 16, 2025

This year, we celebrate a major milestone, over two decades of driving positive change in cocoa. From the heart of growing regions to global processing facilities, our journey has been shaped by a deep commitment to sustainability, traceability and collaboration, to create quality cocoa, from plant to palate – striving to be the preferred partner for change. This enables us to deliver real impact while reducing risks across the supply chain, equipping our customers with a powerful provenance narrative for their consumers, and strengthening our readiness for increasing regulatory reporting and compliance requirements.

A legacy of impact

Since our first quality improvement initiative in 2004 in Indonesia, ofi has worked hand-in-hand with cocoa farmers, local communities, customers, donors, implementing partners and producing country governments to enhance the environmental and social sustainability of our cocoa supply chain in 9¹ sustainable sourcing countries in Asia, South America and Africa. Over the past two decades, together we’ve:

Empowered over 300,000 cocoa farmers with through training, tools, and support to transition to more sustainable farming practices.
Planted 8.9 million trees² to promote agroforestry to support farmers to diversify their incomes and contribute towards carbon reduction.
Achieved 100% traceability and deforestation monitoring to the farm or community in our direct cocoa supply chain.
Reduced our GHG natural capital costs by 7%³ from our processing and agriculture activities, supporting our company scope 1, 2 & 3 emission reductions as part of our journey towards net zero.
Become one of the first companies in the industry to set a target for Living Income⁴ as well as establishing living income reference values for all nine of our sustainable cocoa sourcing countries.
These numbers reflect more than just progress, they represent change to livelihoods, ecosystems, and processing to make a more resilient future for farmers and the supply of cocoa.

Lessons we've learned

Sustainability starts with people: Investing in farmers and communities is the foundation of lasting impact. We’ve learned that when farmers are empowered with knowledge, tools, and opportunities, sustainability becomes a shared goal.
Traceability is non-negotiable: Knowing where cocoa comes from is essential to protecting forests, preventing child labor, and improving farmer livelihoods. We’re now strengthening our traceability and deforestation mapping further, all the way to the farm, using polygons which trace the farms’ boundaries. Our journey to 100% traceability to the farm has taught us that transparency builds trust and drives accountability.
Innovation must be inclusive: Technology is powerful, but only when it’s accessible. From mobile apps to AI-powered monitoring, we’ve learned to design solutions that work for farmers in the field, as well as our teams around the world.
Partnerships multiply impact: No single organization can solve systemic challenges alone. Our success has been shaped by collaboration with our customers, governments, NGOs, donors and communities, to create solutions that scale.
Local context matters: Sustainability isn’t one-size-fits-all. We’ve learned to adapt our programs to local realities, respecting cultural norms and community priorities.

Innovation in action

As sustainability evolves, so do we. ofi continues to invest in innovative solutions that drive measurable impact across our 9 sustainable souring locations:

Digital traceability tools that track cocoa from farm to factory
AI-powered monitoring systems to track changes in forest cover and tree carbon stocks to protect forests and measure carbon capture.
Regenerative agriculture practices for farmers that restore soil, reduce emissions, and improve yields.

Scaling for the next 20 years

Looking ahead, we’ve already scaled some of our targets in line with our company’s overarching sustainability strategy, Choices for Change. This includes new and updated targets for 2030:

Planting 15 million trees for agroforestry systems
Establishing 10 landscape partnerships to protect forests and biodiversity while supporting farmer livelihoods.
Bringing over 1 million hectares under regenerative agriculture
500,000 farmer households receive enhanced livelihood support

In the coming months, we’ll start to share further impact in our global direct supply chain, and how we’re tracking against our 2030 targets in our next Cocoa Compass impact report. We’d like to thank all our partners who have been with us on our journey so far, and welcome more to join us, as we look forward to the next chapter. Together, we can be the change for good food and a healthier future.