Barry Callebaut has announced a collaboration with SAP, the market leader in enterprise software to help enable sustainable cocoa farming. Coupled with this announcement is the launch of an innovative cloud-based solution for cocoa bean traceability and better sustainability data management using solutions from SAP.
The solution was developed with SAP and combines desktop and mobile access, allowing usage in the most remote locations. Information on farmers, their farms and their communities can be recorded digitally at every level of the supply chain.
Farmer registration, cocoa buying, processing and transportation records enable the traceability of cocoa beans from the farmer to Barry Callebaut’s warehouse.
Additionally, sustainability-related activity records allow for assessment of individual farmer and community needs and analysis, resulting in higher quality and higher impact support. Beyond the usual services, farmers now have improved access to seedlings, fertilizer and training that cater to their specific needs.
This approach is at the foundation of Barry Callebaut’s strategy to monitor and foster the adoption of sustainable cocoa and social practices and enhance impact on the ground.
Nicko Debenham, Vice-President Cocoa Sustainability at Barry Callebaut, comments: “This is an essential step in our commitment to make cocoa more sustainable.
This tool will allow us to approach sustainability in an unprecedented way, providing the right advice to farmers, driving adoption of best practices, and improving yields and livelihoods.
It will help farmers better manage their farms and professionalize cocoa farming in order to sustain it into the future.”
“Barry Callebaut is an excellent example of how digital transformation in the agribusiness industry can simplify business processes and improve people’s lives “, said Anja Strothkaemper, vice president, SAP Agribusiness and Commodity Management.
“Working together, SAP and Barry Callebaut can help make agriculture easier for small-scale farmers, farmer cooperatives, and cocoa buyers with a cloud-based solution that helps improve productivity, quality and transparency.”
The project has been called “Katchilè” by the Barry Callebaut team implementing it on the ground, a word from the local Baoulé language in Côte d’Ivoire, meaning “change”. Katchilè is changing the way information is being collected, transmitted and used.
“Katchilè completely changed the way we work: we can better plan our activities and we receive better information, faster”, says Adjéhi Jean-Jacques, Barry Callebaut field agent working near Yamoussoukro, who has been using the SAP Rural Sourcing Management Solution running on the SAP HANA® Cloud platform since the beginning of the pilot in October 2015.
The system went live on June 13th 2016 with the ambition to cover all cocoa farmers participating in Barry Callebaut’s sustainability activities in Côte d’Ivoire – currently about 65,000 farmers.
Read more about Barry Callebaut’s sustainability initiatives in the 2014/15 Chocolate Sustainability Report.
