UPL, a provider of sustainable agricultural solutions, has published its annual progress report under the Cocoa Forest Initiative (CFI), revealing that it has exceeded all targets across each reporting category.
The CFI is a public-private partnership between the World Cocoa Foundation, the governments of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana, and 36 leading cocoa and chocolate companies that aims to combat deforestation and restore forested areas.
In 2022, UPL and its local partners supported over 92,242 farmers in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire with an investment of US$355,857 to create a more sustainable, equitable, and profitable cocoa faming system. This included training 16,450 cocoa growers in Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), such as the use of sustainable crop protection inputs to increase yields and incomes. UPL also expanded access to Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLA) schemes to over 16,110 farmers, enabling them to save, invest in their practices, and uplift their livelihoods.
“I would like to thank all those who invested their time and hard work to ensure we reached more farmers than ever before. Working together with farmers, who are at the heart of what we do, we are making sustainable cocoa a reality,” said Jai Shroff, Group CEO of UPL. “We look forward to continuing our Reimagining Sustainability mission to uplift cocoa communities, transform global food chains, and the safeguard the environment.”
Looking ahead, UPL aims to work with more cocoa communities, with an aim of reaching an additional 45,000 farmers with training in GAPs and stewardship methods and 270,000 with access to financial products and services.
“We are proud to have surpassed our 2022 targets and to have brought positive impacts to more growers. As the only agri-inputs signatory to CFI, we are committed to using our unique position to expand these positive impacts to benefit more farmers, empower more communities, and advance the sustainability of the cocoa sector,” added Hubert Ehouman, Cocoa Lead for West & Central Africa of UPL.
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