The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF) to convene its annual Partnership Meeting in Brazil
USA – The World Cocoa Foundation (WCF), an international membership organisation representing the global cocoa and chocolate sectors, has announced its upcoming annual partnership meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, from 19th to 20th March 2025.
Under the theme “Our Future: Resilience Through Sustainability,” more than 400 stakeholders from over 40 countries—representing the entire cocoa supply chain—will gather to tackle the sector’s urgent challenges.
Critical topics on the agenda include transforming cocoa supply chains, modern farming innovations, sector-wide impact measurement, market insights, regulatory adaptation and consumer markets and preferences.
According to WCF, the cocoa sector faces formidable challenges, from climate change, disease, declining productivity, evolving regulation, and supply deficits to market volatility.
The partnership meeting will highlight the pressing need for sustainable practices to develop resilience and ensure the future of cocoa farming and the broader industry.
Chris Vincent, President of the WCF, said, “Given the challenges and the pace of the changes reshaping the global cocoa sector, this is a pivotal moment to bring leaders together to discuss and find common solutions.
“We are thrilled to host this year’s event in Brazil, a country uniquely positioned to inspire new ideas, foster South-South exchanges and showcase innovations in sustainable agriculture.”
Last year, the foundation held the partnership meeting from 6th -7th February 2024, in Amsterdam, Netherlands.
The meeting convened more than 500 sustainability leaders from 10 countries, representing the private sector, farmer organisations, governments, civil society, and academia, to explore the theme of aligning for Global Impact.
Chris Vincent outlined WCF’s new strategy for driving progress through partnerships in its three focus areas: improving farmer income, combatting child labour, and reversing deforestation.
This included an aim to launch distinctive new collaborative programmes, similar to the Cocoa & Forests Initiative (CFI) but that will address farmer income and combat child labour.
Panellists explored topics like how agroforestry and other income tools can truly benefit cocoa farmers, how companies across the sector will comply with EUDR starting in 2025, how to overcome traceability and other measurement challenges, and the perspective of policymakers in origin countries.
In addition to the challenges, the event celebrated progress in certain areas. Speakers from the European Parliament and European Commission shared how the legislative agenda on deforestation and human rights was progressing.
Further building on the unprecedented public-private partnership CFI with new initiatives like priority landscape approaches and Greenhouse Gas (GHG) accounting methodologies was also addressed.
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