Tradin Organic: new projects for sourcing organic cocoa

Since the 1980’s, Tradin Organic have been active in sourcing organic cocoa and is developing new projects each year. In 2015, some of the new origins added to the project list were Peru and Sierra Leone.
 

Tradin Organic is continuously providing support and training in organic farming for small scale farmers worldwide. In 2015, 240 Peruvian cocoa farmers were selected to join the Tradin Organic cocoa program, and had their farms organically certified (EU and NOP). Tradin has set up buying points for organic cocoa, close to the growing areas, where farmers can deliver their beans and get paid a fair price, including an organic premium.

The growers who have joined the program also benefit from technical assistance to optimize quality and yields. From there on, Tradin ensures that the beans are shipped per batch with full traceability to Amsterdam where they get processed by Crown of Holland (see our report).

In 2015 Tradin Organic also started a collaboration with a local partner in Sierra Leone, to set up a fully traceable supply chain of organic cocoa in the region. During the year Tradin coordinated organic certifications of 4.999 cocoa farmers. The aim is to expand this group to 15.000 organic farmers in Sierra Leone.

Measuring sustainbility

In recent years ‘Sustainability’ has become the new buzz word, introduced to the public by marketeers of conventional multinational companies to promote their products. This has unfortunately not led to any clear transparent consumer insight to what this word really implies, and one sometimes cannot help to avoid the term ‘green-washing’ coming to mind. In order to structure and measure our long lasting comprehensive sustainability efforts as an organic company, Tradin has started to work on a method to measure its responsibility impact, with maximum transparency. By the end of 2016, we will have a system for a distinct impact analysis, to better compare our efforts with conventional conduct and to improve how we communicate our sustainability measures on a yearly basis.