New York - Mondelez International, the maker of Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers, is seeking to boost African coffee output 50 percent by mid-2017 as part of a $200 million global programme aimed at farmers of the bean.
The project, called Coffee Made Happy, began this month in Africa with assistance for 24 000 Ethiopian small-holder farms, the company said on Wednesday. Deerfield, Illinois-based Mondelez’s initiative gives training in agronomy, financial literacy and promoting coffee farming to youth and women, he said. It plans to reach a million farmers worldwide over the next five years.
“What we want to do is move away from just certification and paying premiums for certified crop,” Roland Weening, president for coffee at Mondelez Europe, said in an interview in Nairobi on February 12. “We want to make sure that coffee farming is a profitable business and that farmers and farming communities thrive and develop.”
Mondelez, which says it’s the world’s second-biggest coffee company by sales, buys the bean from African nations including Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya, according to Weening. The continent has at least 21 coffee-producing countries, accounting for 11 percent of 2014 global output, according to data from the International Coffee Organisation.
Outside Africa, Mondelez began similar initiatives in 2012, according to the project’s website. It currently covers Vietnam, Peru, Indonesia and Honduras, while the addition of Ethiopia increases the tally of farmers supported to 300 000, Weening said.
The programme will be extended to other East African nations which haven’t yet been identified, he said.
“There is great quality coffee in Africa and we see the productivity levels in Africa are relatively low so there is a great opportunity to improve the business,” Weening said.
Mondelez, which sells about 80 percent of its products outside North America, is boosting output abroad as the stronger dollar increases domestic costs and lowers the value of international revenue.
The company buys about 5 percent of all the coffee produced globally, Weening said.
Bloomberg