Nestlé in society Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015

Nestlé in society:
Creating Shared Value
Nutrition, health
and wellness
Rural development
Water
Environmental
sustainability
Human rights
and compliance
Our
people
G4-EC7, Procurement practices G4-DMA, FP2, Supplier environmental assessment G4-DMA, G4-EN33, Supplier assessment for labor practices G4-DMA,
G4-LA15, G4-HR5, G4-HR10, G4-SO9, G4-SO10
Putting the Nestlé Cocoa Plan
into practice in Côte d’Ivoire
Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa sector faces numerous challenges.
Nestlé, in partnership with the FLA and other organisations, is
working closely with cocoa co-operatives to tackle these
issues. One such co-operative is USCRG, comprising 895
farmers in the Gôh region. Our work with them focuses on the
three pillars of the Nestlé Cocoa Plan – improved profitability
for farmers, improved social conditions and improved sourcing.
Many of the co-operative’s farms are ageing so, in 2010, we
created a nursery to grow new, high-yielding plants. Around
30 000 plants are distributed free of charge to farms each year
and, once matured, are expected to improve yields
significantly, perhaps by more than double, boosting farmers’
incomes. To support this, we train farmers in good agricultural
practices, such as farm maintenance and harvest techniques.
Farms are audited independently and farmers implementing
good practices receive certification. Subsequent annual
inspections and incentives promote continual improvement.
Improving social conditions – in particular addressing child
labour and women’s empowerment – is a key element of
achieving better lives. We have installed our Child Labour
Monitoring and Remediation System (CLMRS) in the
co-operative, and work with farmers to raise awareness of
the issues. We help children in need, for example by providing
school kits and, since 2012, we have built or refurbished eight
schools in the USCRG area.
Nestlé also supports women to develop their own incomes
by growing crops such as cassava, banana plantain and
vegetables. Through the community-led Gender Action
Learning for Sustainability methodology, we are helping
community members make individual action plans, and
providing opportunities for women to have their voices heard.
Together with the International Federation of Red Cross and
Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Nestlé is also supporting
hygiene improvement, such as rehabilitating water pumps and
building sanitary facilities. Currently, 23 villages have hygiene
or sanitation programmes in place.
We work with the co-operative in helping them to set their
plans for the next three years. What is important is that the
co-operative decides for itself what it wants to do, rather than
having it imposed from outside. With a significant investment,
both financially and in resources, the work at USCRG is already
demonstrating real benefits, both for the farmers and their
families, and in securing a sustainable supply chain.
Read more in the Human rights and compliance chapter.
Investing in plant and soil research
Activities such as agronomic research into soil fertility, plant
nutrition and the improvement of farming systems, together
with the distribution of cocoa plants, are major factors in
enabling cocoa farmers to grow more and higher-quality crops
over the long term and thus improve their income. Nestlé
continued to run our 30 hectare experimental and
demonstration farm at Zambakro, Côte d’Ivoire, in 2015, which
serves as a farmer training academy and a plant research and
propagation centre. In addition, we propagated and distributed
1.7 million plants in Côte d’Ivoire.
Building schools
Building schools helps create better opportunities for the
children in the communities from which we source cocoa.
In 2015, we continued our programme, building two sixclassroom
schools to make a total of 42 schools built or
refurbished since 2012.
Nestlé and IFRC continue partnership in
West Africa
Nestlé has a long-standing collaboration with the
International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent
Societies (IFRC) dating back to 2006. Our work together
has particularly focused on improving rural communities’
access to water. Through this collaboration, some
228 861 people in Côte d’Ivoire’s cocoa-growing
communities have benefited from access to clean
drinking water and sanitation. We now plan to extend
improvements in hygiene and sanitation in rural
communities into neighbouring Ghana. Read more in the
Water section.
Gender equality
Nestlé firmly believes that empowering women with more life
opportunities, knowledge and skills enables them to raise
healthier families, leading to more children going to school
rather than working on the family’s cocoa farms. Our
commitment to gender equality includes supporting the
UN Every Woman Every Child initiative, signing up to the
UN Women’s Empowerment Principles, our Action Plan on
Women in the Cocoa Supply Chain, and exploring what more
we can do to improve the lives of women operating in our
supply chains.
Nestlé in society – Creating Shared Value and meeting our commitments 2015 123