GPS Mapping
Increasing transparency on the ground
GPS mapping offers great potential as a way to gather data accurately and rapidly, particularly in remote rural environments. It is providing us with more detailed information than ever before about the farmers we work with, including the location, size and footprint of their farms, the type and age of trees grown, the cultivation methods used, choices made about fertilizers, replanting activities, the use or not of shade trees, along with a wealth of information about farming families and communities. This data not only increases transparency to show the outcomes we are achieving, it provides invaluable insight on the specific challenges that farms face which can be used to offer bespoke support to improve productivity through targeted farm development plans, training and other inputs.
GPS mapping of smallholder cocoa farmers is not an easy task. Farms can be remotely located at long distances from each other and the weather can have a negative influence on local road conditions and GPS signals. Nevertheless, we have now mapped over 50,000 farms in Côte d’Ivoire, 6,000 in Indonesia, and hundreds in Cameroon, providing invaluable information on yields and farming methods.
As part of our commitment to eliminating deforestation from our cocoa supply chain, we will begin using GPS mapping to demonstrate whether a farm location is linked to a deforestation hotspot.
What we have learnt
Progress and highlights
56,000 farms mapped using GPS mapping, including 6,000 in Indonesia and the rest in Côte d’Ivoire
Looking ahead
We will use GPS mapping to assess farm size across 36,000 more farms in Côte d’Ivoire in 2017/2018, along with 5,000 farmers in Ghana, almost 9,000 farmers in Cameroon and 1,000 farmers in Indonesia. In Brazil, we plan to map between 20-40% of the farmers we source from in 2017/2018.