The partnership aims to deliver a seedling nursery that can grow up to 1M high-yielding cocoa seedlings each year Mondelez has recently announced a new collaboration with Olam Food Ingredients (OFI), a…

The partnership aims to deliver a seedling nursery that can grow up to 1M high-yielding cocoa seedlings each year

Mondelez has recently announced a new collaboration with Olam Food Ingredients (OFI), a leading supplier of cocoa beans and cocoa ingredients, to create the world’s single largest sustainable commercial cocoa farm in Indonesia.

The model builds on the companies experience with its signature sustainable sourcing program, Cocoa Life, and OFI’s ambition for sustainable cocoa, cocoa compass, to test a scalable approach for the future of commercial cocoa farming.

From sensors in fields to irrigation systems, the project will use advanced climate-smart and plant science technology – rarely used to grow cocoa at this scale – as innovations included in this 2,000-hectare cocoa farm on Seram, the largest island in Maluku province in Indonesia. The model tests a modernized and professional blueprint for best practice cocoa farming, optimal land usage and farming community planning which will be explored as a potential model for replication across the region.

The partnership aims to deliver:

• 2,000 hectares of previously deforested brownfield land, which will be planted with cocoa, shade trees, forest and fruit trees to promote biodiversity and carbon capture.
• An area of 47 hectares has been identified as a High Conservation Value forest and is being fully protected as a vital habitat for flora and fauna.
• A seedling nursery that can grow up to one million high-yielding cocoa seedlings each year.