Monitoring and Evaluating ESG and Impact Criteria in the Cocoa Supply Chain
Background
In 2009, Mars Global Chocolate, the world’s second largest chocolate manufacturer and maker of some of the worlds’ most popular candies (M&Ms, Snickers, Twix, Dove), committed to sourcing only “certified sustainable” cocoa by 2020. To achieve this ambitious goal, Mars launched the multi-million dollar Sustainable Cocoa Initiative to triple yields for hundreds of thousands of farmers in Africa and Asia. Mars believes this increased yield will in turn increase incomes sufficiently to raise cocoa farmers and their dependents out of poverty
After designing their on the ground interventions and implementing the first phase, Mars realized that they had not yet completed a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework, identified impact indicators nor created a system to collect this data in the field. Though the Mars team believed that their efforts would triple productivity for hundreds of thousands of farmers, they were not yet able to link these productivity increases directly to income. Furthermore, as Mars’ programs scaled up, it became difficult to track the hundreds of different projects spread over large geographic areas, particularly those in rural Côte d’Ivoire.
To address M&E gap, we created an impact measurement framework and compiled a summary of existing information on similar programs, and to improve ongoing program management accountability, we created a monitoring system with the Ivorian government to catalog existing projects, measure their efficiency and track new projects.
Approach
I first interviewed Mars’ team of cocoa purchasing, science and policy experts to create a common definition of “certified sustainable” cocoa and select specific criteria to evaluate their programs’ success in the field. Simultaneously, I conducted exhaustive secondary research on historic industry programs and compiled a summary of industry progress according to those criteria.
Results
Mars was spending millions of dollars every year without any way to gauge its effectiveness in the field. Because of this work, Mars is now able to collect specific indicators and calculate net farm income, taking into account a variety of factors like input costs, farm rehabilitation, labor costs, yield and market price.
Thanks to a revised program management process, we were also able to collect information for more than 300 existing projects within Mars’ intervention zone, finally giving them an overview of their actual impact in the field. This overview allowed Mars to spot funding bottlenecks and quickly address roadblocks that may have prevented them and their partners from keeping promises made to local communities to fund millions of dollars worth of projects.
Finally, this work provided Mars a solid foundation to fulfill their role as industry thought leader and present a clear call to action to their peers. This call to action was presented by Barry Parkin, Mars’ Chief Sustainability Officer, at the inaugural ChocoVision Conference in June of 2012.
I then worked with Mars’ head of agricultural extension for cocoa to create a rough economic model to compare farmers’ costs and benefits within Mars’ intervention. We used this rough model to create a proposal for a noted agricultural economist to conduct further primary research to test our assumptions empirically.
We also found the existing program management process to plan, initiate, fund and review projects was both complex and unwieldy, involving many actors from the public and private spheres. More concerning, the program relied on a paper-based data collection system that required hours to record data, and few recorded data were digitized.
After we mapped the existing process and identified key points where critical information was generated, we designed a data collection framework and technology strategy to implement it in the field. We then met with government leaders and agreed on a data collection, review and submission policy for their field agents and agreed to provide mobile digital survey technology to reduce the time and personnel needed.