So, in the next 10 minutes or so,

• I am going to share with you why I believe alleviating poverty is possible, certainly in the agribusiness.

• I am going to share with you what my company, my teams, myself are doing about it,

• and, most importantly, I will ask you to join: not to be spectators, not to be commentators, but to join.

But let me start at the beginning: Why I believe that alleviating poverty in one generation is possible? It is very simple: I have seen it happen twice in my lifetime. I have seen it in the last 15 years when, through the drive which was put behind the millennium development goals, extreme poverty has been halved. It is only half and there is another half to go, but it is a lot of people. And it is not a bad start.

The other time goes back to my childhood. I had my very first job when I turned 7. It was just a summer job but I was incredibly serious about it. I was going to get my first salary. I became a farm boy somewhere in the South of France.

Believe it or not but 45 years ago over there, there was no running water on the farm. You would depend largely on homegrown vegetables and cattle for your daily living and you’d save the money of the crop for harder times: a roof falling, a tractor needing repairs, a health issue. Agribusiness companies were making money, but not necessarily the farmers.

I still visit this farm. And when you go there now, you see 4 wheel drives, you see large screen TVs and GPS assisted tractors: it is definitely wealthier.

And what is important is that its farmers are wealthier as a result of a joint effort to transform the ecosystem: changing property rights to make the farms bigger, better technology to increase yields, easier access to credit, better collaboration between cooperatives and traders and access to higher education for farmers children. Things we are now taking for granted...

And that’s my first message to you: Things can happen, but no one alone has the solution. You need to think at the scale of an ecosystem, you need to think end to end, you need to think teaming up with others.

So we could seat happily, selling lots of chocolate and cocoa, doing good as we do well. But,  we decided this is not good enough. Because the cocoa farmers from which we buy for a large part live in misery. A poverty much worse than the one I experienced 45 years ago in France. And their kids work in the fields. Not the kind of work I was doing. Work that threatens their health and prevents a number of them from going to school.

So you cannot turn a blind eye to this. You cannot for obvious moral reasons. You also cannot for very practical reasons. If farmers do not earn a living, they keep clearing the tropical forest for new farmland. There will be no forest left, and there will be no rain for cocoa. If farmers do not earn a living their kids will continue to work the fields instead of attending school. If the farmers do not earn a living, they won’t replant cocoa trees and eventually, there will be no more cocoa beans. And then there will be no chocolate.

That is why a year ago we decided to launch a movement with the ambition to make sustainable chocolate the norm by 2025. We call it ‘Forever Chocolate’.

When we set these four targets with clear and somewhat bold metrics – there were a few things we were fully aware of:

First of all, whilst we are sticking our neck out, we cannot do it alone: we need competitors, government, NGO’s to pull in the same direction. Don’t get me wrong: there are plenty of things we can do. 

• Last year we trained 157,000 cocoa farmers including over 10,000 women farmers, in good agricultural practices, as well as awareness raising on child labor.

• We are implementing a cloud-based farm data management system across 65,000 farmers allowing us to be in contact with farmers in near real time, offering an unprecedented level of transparency in the sourcing of our cocoa beans.

• We sourced from over 147,000 farmers through Biolands, our direct sourcing organization, allowing us to engage with farmers and support them by providing training, fertilizers, services, and assistance in the production of certified cocoa.  

But we can increase our impact a lot more if other stakeholders jump in: Governments when it comes to building infrastructure, enforcing legislation, constructing schools, ensuring safety, but also access to the right seedlings. Like-minded companies - including competitors to go faster to critical mass. NGOs to measure keep raising awareness and drive for impact. The farmers themselves as they will need to change some of their practices and needs to be up to if or it. 

Number 2, we are sticking our neck out without having all the answers. Actually, in a number of cases, we have the target, but we don’t have the solution yet. This is a risk, but I am not too worried about this: if you wait until you know all the answers, you’ll never move. Being in motion forces you to find solutions.

And if you are not up for those companies, start your own: Be an innovator and bring us solutions we have not thought of. Be social entrepreneurs and help shape the ecosystem.

Whatever you choose to do, choose to act: there is no more time to comment from the sidelines. We need action.

So, getting back to ‘Forever Chocolate’, this is the journey we have embarked on. One year into the journey we feel excited - as we think we are doing the right thing and we do believe we can lead a movement which will transform the industry for the better. We also still have a good amount of respect the tasks at hand and as we know we lack some of the answers. And we feel extraordinarily determined - determined to make things move because if things do not move chocolate will become an expensive treat for the few, rather than the many”.  And if this happens we won’t be able to pour enough money into education each year, then, everybody will have lost.

So please join us on our journey, do it either through business or with business-like discipline. And keep fighting to save the Earth. It is the only planet with Chocolate.

Thank you!