The Barry Callebaut Group joined two multistakeholder initiatives on smallholder farmers and biodiversity at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York, in order to support the company’s goal of lifting over 500,000 cocoa farmers out of poverty and to become carbon and forest positive by 2025. Barry Callebaut co-signed the One Planet Business for Biodiversity (OP2B) coalition, an action-oriented business coalition of companies with a specific focus on agriculture determined to catalyze bold action to protect and restore cultivated and natural biodiversity within their value chains.

In addition, the group also signed the vision statement for the "Just Rural Transition" initiative. This multistakeholder platform is committed to transform by 2030 the way in which food is produced and consumed, and land and natural resources are used.

Pablo Perversi, Chief Innovation, Sustainability and Quality Officer at Barry Callebaut, said: “We joined these two initiatives because impact on the ground is created through the combination of resources and insights from the public and private sector. Through Barry Callebaut’s Farm Services Business, as well as through our data insights into the structural challenges for individual cocoa farms, we are in pole position to help smallholder cocoa farmers in building the cocoa farms of the future”.