The Flower Farm joins Tony’s Open Chain
Tony’s Open Chain welcomes The Flower Farm as a new mission ally!
This new mission ally has an objective: to stop deforestation of tropical rainforests. And in the past they have specifically focussed on deforestation through the construction of palm oil plantations. They make 100% vegetable margarine where palm oil is replaced by an alternative that is guaranteed to be deforestation-free: shea butter.
After having conquered the margarine category, they want to challenge the use of palm oil in hazelnut paste.
Over 60% of the world’s cocoa comes from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. Some estimates show that these two nations have lost the vast bulk of their forests over the past several decades. One of the main reasons; cocoa.
So the next logical step for The Flower Farm when considering chocolate paste was to join Tony's Open Chain. Because sourcing their cacao via Tony’s Open Chain means they also do everything possible to stop deforestation in cocoa.
The anti-deforestation efforts of Tony’s Open Chain include:
- Addressing the issue of productivity by implementing good agricultural practices such as pest control and soil fertility;
- Addressing farmer agroforestry knowledge through awareness raising and training focusing on productivity enhancing measures like pruning;
- Addressing climate change issues via agroforestry programs such as creating local shade tree nurseries, many of them female run, to support the planting of shade trees to a level of eighteen trees per hectare (more than 500,000 trees are expected to be planted by the 2023-2024 cocoa planting season);
- Addressing the issue of expansion into protected areas by providing famers with alternate plots of land in non-protected areas;
- Addressing the issue of monoculture by helping famers diversity crops including the planting of multi-use shade and fruit trees; and
- Detailed polygon mapping of all the cocoa farms in the cooperatives with which Tony’s Open Chain works via the latest GPS technology.
“With The Flower Farm, I am happy to be able to draw attention to an essential issue: deforestation. I am convinced that joining Tony’s Open Chain enables us to make even more meaningful impact.”
- Marcel van Wing, co-founder The Flower Farm
