The FLA annually conducts independent assessments of a sample of each affiliated company’s supply chain. For Olam in Ivory Coast, the FLA has been monitoring since 2013 a portion of the cocoa-producing cooperatives and farms in its Ivory Coast supply chain. As of 2014, Olam had traced 54 percent of its cocoa supply chain in Ivory Coast, which represents 107 cooperatives and about 45,000 farmers.Â
From December 2014 to January 2015, during the peak cocoa-harvesting season, the FLA conducted five unannounced independent external monitoring visits to two cooperatives selected through stratified random sampling. A team consisting of trained external assessors conducted the visits in two different regions of the Ivory Coast visiting five communities in the regions of Toumodi and Yakasse Attobrou. Â Assessors visited a total of 100 farms (20 farms in each of the five communities). These 100 farms represent seven percent of the 1394 farm owners affiliated with the two visited cooperatives.
The report summarizes the FLA’s findings for its 2014 assessments, the companies’ responses, and company actions completed in 2014 based on the 2013 assessments. Â