Introducing Choices for Change

Guest Author: Maude Manoukian, Chief Community Officer, Forager Project

At Forager Project, our journey has always been about more than just food. We believe that small, thoughtful choices—what we eat, how we source ingredients, and who we partner with—can lead to a more sustainable future.

For years, cashews have been at the heart of what we do. They’re the foundation of our creamy Cashewmilk Yogurt, an essential source of protein in our plant-based shakes, and the star ingredient in most of the products we make. But behind every cashew is a farmer, a family, and a community working hard to make a living—often with limited resources and opportunities.

That’s why we asked ourselves: What more can we do?

The answer: CashewNuss, an initiative we’re launching with ofi and German development agency GIZ as part of our

One Small Step program. Through this partnership, we’re working hand-in-hand with 10,000 cashew farmers in Côte d’Ivoire to support sustainable farming, organic certification, business training, and community development.

Why this matters

For many cashew farmers in Côte d’Ivoire, their orchards are their only source of income. With just one harvest per year, it can be challenging to provide for their families, invest in their farms, or access the training and resources needed to grow their businesses.

Women farmers, in particular, face additional challenges—they often have less access to education, training, and markets, making it harder for them to build financial independence.

We believe sustainability isn’t just about the planet—it’s also about people. CashewNuss is about taking small but meaningful steps to support farmers, their families, and their communities in ways that create lasting change.

ofi, a global leader in food and beverage ingredients and solutions, international NGO Rikolto, and the German Development Agency GIZ (Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), have today announced a low-carbon agriculture project in Ecuador, which aims to support farmers to mitigate against and adapt to the impacts of climate change on cocoa production.

The consortium is co-funded by BMZ and ofi, with Rikolto leading the implementation for ofi’s sustainability programs, including those it delivers for its customers over a three-year period. It seeks to address the impact of unpredictable weather conditions on growing cocoa by training 2,800 farmers in climate-smart agriculture.

Climate change poses a significant threat to 1.7 million Ecuadorians dependent on cocoa, with approximately 60% of cocoa farmers relying on cocoa as their main source of income.¹

The low-carbon agriculture project aims to help support farmers in creating more resilient livelihoods and increasing the efficiency of their cocoa production. By implementing agroforestry, a regenerative farming approach, cocoa can grow alongside other plant species. The technique can help farmers to improve cocoa yields and provide additional income from other planted crops, while sequestering carbon and promoting biodiversity.

The training will be delivered through 600 tailored coaching sessions or 'field schools'. Farmers, at least 20% of whom will be women, will be taught to integrate sustainability principles and agricultural standards into existing farming approaches, helping them to boost cocoa productivity and build climate resilience. The project will also produce 40,000 plants of the rare and native Nacional cocoa variety for distribution, housed within an organic cocoa production community nursery.

Insights from the project will be generated by leveraging ofi’s award-winning AtSource sustainability management system with best practices and learnings shared with national authorities, including the Ministry of Agriculture and Environment to help inform national climate policy. The project is aligned with Ecuador's REDD+ Action Plan "Forests for Good Living" 2016-2025.

¹ Ecuadorian Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock. 2019. Report on cocoa yields

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, at a time when the cost of climate inaction is sounding loud and clear. If wildfires in one of the richest places in the world can cause destruction of such magnitude, what does that mean for remote farming areas and the farmers, businesses and consumers they serve? It’s more vital than ever that we keep pushing for progress to happen at all levels: as a global community, in government decision-making, and the business world.

With this renewed focus on driving transformational impact, I'm reminded of my other passion beyond sustainability: music. As a saxophonist playing in multiple bands across jazz, funk, soul and pop genres, I’ve learned that creating transformative music requires more than individual virtuosity – it demands precise coordination, timing, and harmony across the entire ensemble.

The same holds true for climate action in global food supply chains. Like the horn sections in a band trying to work in perfect sync, at ofi, working with farming communities across the globe to grow, source and produce food ingredients and solutions, we’re orchestrating a multi-layered approach on climate action. We’ve already done a lot of the theoretical construct – our overarching sustainability strategy Choices for Change provides the musical score that makes it easy for customers and stakeholders to understand our approach, progress, and impact across all products and ingredients.

It sets ambitious targets that include halving Scope 1 & 2 emissions and cutting Scope 3 by 30% by 2030, in line with SBTi. We’ve laid out the ‘how’ with action plans to achieve these targets and deliver interconnected benefits. And these are backed by policies, specialist manuals, digital tools and our sustainability management system AtSource.

But here's the thing about music – and climate action: It's not just about hitting the right notes. It's about innovation, adaptation, and synchronizing diverse elements for maximum effect. Low-carbon cocoa and coffee handbooks guide our field teams on the most impactful climate-smart practices to incorporate into their training sessions with farmers. Granular farm data gathered by our teams on the ground flows into AtSource and the smart tools that are embedded and developed by our climate action team - a Digital Footprint Calculator, Carbon Scenario Planner, and Carbon Sequestration Monitoring tool. In combination, they bring AI-powered analysis and robustly modelled scenarios that allow us to track changes in forest cover and carbon stocks across our supply chains and design programs with our customers to deliver long-term greenhouse gas reductions.

Just as in music, there's no solo path to tackling climate change. It’s too complex with too many uncertainties to be scored in detail. Which is why our focus remains on working hand-in-hand with our customers, NGOs, certification agencies, development finance institutions, local governments and of course, the farmers themselves, to scale impact. Everyone has a part to play.

The most powerful ensembles are formed from bringing together multiple players in production landscapes under a long-term and large-scale plan to achieve holistic transformational change for nature and people. Like in Côte d’Ivoire, where ofi’s coffee team has joined forces with IDH, roaster JDE Peets, regional councils and local cooperatives to conserve forest resources and promote sustainable coffee production in the Cavally region, home to the largest protected area of rainforest in West Africa.  This is one of our 7 active ‘living landscape partnerships’ and we’ve committed to establishing 20 by 2030. An approach that resonates with one of the prominent soundbites to come out of COP29; that “radical collaboration” is the only way to solve the big climate challenges we face.

As we look ahead to COP30, the rich biodiversity and ecological importance of the Amazonian backdrop should serve as a stark reminder of what’s at stake if we don’t make the right choices to accelerate climate action. I invite fellow sustainability leaders to join our orchestra for change. Let's create harmony between business growth and environmental stewardship.

Because when it comes to climate action, we're all in the same band.

#BetheChange #ClimateAction #Sustainability #FoodSystems #COP30