Highlights and Challenges

Actions we’ve taken

NESTLÉ: cocoa plan: Cocoa farmer Eugenio Bautista Velázquez consults NESTLÉ advisor Rubén Jiménez

• We’ve developed a new Rural Development Framework, which we will start to rollout in 2013. It is our goal to roll out the Rural Development Framework to 21 countries by 2015.
• We’ve launched Responsible Sourcing Guidelines for sugar.
• We are the first food company to partner with the Fair Labor Association.
• We’ve updated our Commitment on Child Labour in Agricultural Supply Chains in three key commodity areas: cocoa, hazelnuts and vanilla.

Challenges we've faced

• Ensuring that small-scale farming is an attractive occupation.
• Meeting the scale of the challenge to reverse years of declining investment by governments into farmer extension services and under-investment in better planting material.
• Defining the role of companies in resolving complex problems involving a multitude of actors from governments to companies to civil society groups.

Our performance

• We've provided services worth USD 37.8 million to assist more than 44,000 farmers.
• We've provided direct financial assistance totalling USD 23 million to farmers.
• We now employ more than 1,180 agronomists and 12,000 support staff to provide advice, training and technical assistance for farmers.
• We've trained 273,808 farmers through our capacity building programmes.