Regenerating ecosystems

Healthy forests are the foundation of thriving cocoa-growing landscapes. Yet forests continue to disappear, biodiversity is declining, and climate change is making cocoa farming increasingly vulnerable. We want to help restore and regenerate the ecosystems that sustain cocoa farming, creating more resilient landscapes for farmers and communities.

What the Cocoa Horizons Foundation does

The Cocoa Horizons Foundation is an independent foundation with the mission to improve cocoa farmer livelihoods through the promotion of sustainable and entrepreneurial farming practices, and to strengthen systems in cocoa communities, ensuring that nature and children are protected.

To regenerate ecosystems, the Foundation invests in the protection and restoration of high-risk cocoa landscapes. The Foundation excels in ensuring farm-level traceability and robust due diligence to ensure that no cocoa is coming from deforested areas.

How?

The Foundation's efforts extend across seven countries: Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, Indonesia, Brazil and Ecuador. With approximately 1,400 coaches and professionals in the field, the Cocoa Horizons Foundation works directly with the farmers.

The Cocoa Horizons Foundation deploys several key activities to lead the way towards positive change with ecosystem safeguarding. Examples of activities include:

Agroforestry	Agroforestry combines cocoa trees with different shade trees on the same land, which increases resilience against temperature changes and diseases, while enhancing biodiversity and soil health.
Shade trees	Distributing quality shade tree seedlings to cocoa farmers to plant them alongside cocoa trees. Shade trees provide an optimal canopy cover to help protect cocoa from heat and water stress, and support optimal growth and long-term productivity. These systems increase biodiversity and improve soil health.
Traceability	Collecting detailed data for each farmer in the programme to identify the origin of the cocoa and monitor deforestation events within and around cocoa farms.

Regenerating Ecosystems - Examples of Activities Enabled by Callebaut’s Investment in FY2024/25

5,681	hectares of farmland under management with agroforestry were enabled.
215,103	shade trees were distributed to farmers.
49,057	tonnes of carbon were sequestered through these environmental activities.

Read the full report