Category: Ethics

The UK TV series, Channel 4’s ‘Dispatches’, broadcasted a damning investigation into Cadbury’s use of child labour in sourcing cocoa from Ghana. It’s very shocking and disturbing. Kids who aren’t even ten years old, wearing just flip flops and t-shirts in sweltering heat are harvesting cocoa with machetes longer than their arms instead of going to school. The whole programme can be found HERE. It’s only 30 minutes, and even though it’s gruesome watching it’s still worth it;  hopefully it’ll persuade you to upgrade to craft chocolate.

Sadly this isn’t new news. Back in the 1990s the BBC broke the story of child slave labour in West African Cocoa. And despite a tonne of follow up TV programmes, media uproar, court cases, the US Congress’ attempt to pass Harkin Engel, and lots of consumer affront, not a lot has changed. Cadbury continues to sell 300 million plus Creme Eggs each year.

Indeed, ever since Cadbury has been sourcing cocoa from West Africa back in the 1880s, slave labour and other abuses on cocoa farms have been prevalent. Over a 100 years ago in 1908 Cadbury suffered an incredibly embarrassing court case versus The Standard (newspaper). But despite this and a massive consumer boycott in the 1920s, it seems that nothing really has changed in the world of commodity chocolate.

So how to fix this. How do we ensure that cocoa farmers are paid enough to live on?

The short answer is to treasure chocolate for its amazing variety of flavours, textures and tastes, and pay the farmers for this. We need to stop cocoa being treated as a ‘commodity ingredient’. We need to switch to craft chocolate that not only tastes better, but is also far better for you, the farmers, and the environment.

There is an incredible irony in the way that cocoa has been commoditised and cheapened. Chocolate literally has more flavour complexity than just about anything on the planet (if you want to experience this, just try THIS box of different bars all crafted from well harvested, fermented and dried Ghanaian cocoa). However, big chocolate has commoditised chocolate, and this has created a doom loop for cocoa farmers, their forests, our planet and our health.

Why are cocoa farmers paid so little?

Economics suggests that as demand increases, prices should rise. So given that demand for chocolate/cocoa has been steadily increasing, why are cocoa prices remaining so low and why are farmers being paid so badly?

Economics also has a concept called monopsony; basically a monopoly where the buyers have the power, effectively dictating prices. This is the position of almost all cocoa grown and purchased in West Africa (which accounts for over two thirds of the world’s production, with Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana by far the largest exporters).

There are a dozen ‘big chocolate’ companies who purchase over 80% of all the commodity cocoa beans grown in West Africa. And as these companies want to make as much money for their shareholders as possible, they seek to pay as little as they can for cocoa (and all the other ingredients) that go into chocolate bars and confectionery. And as part of this cocoa has been commoditized so that all cocoa is interchangeable and all that matters is price.

West Africa has literally millions of small farmers, each with 1-2 hectares, growing 50-200 bags of cocoa a year. These farmers struggle to make enough money. Over 90% of Cocoa Farmers in the Côte d’Ivoire are paid less than half what the World Bank believes is a ‘living income’; to put this into context, men take home $0.78 (US) per day, and women 25¢; and the living income they need is over $2.50 per day. So these farmers are desperate for more income, and cocoa is one of the few cash crops they can grow, so they do everything they can to grow more cocoa, including cutting down the few remaining rainforests to plant more cocoa (this is often cited as one of the major causes of the appalling deforestation, and desertification, in West Africa).

And so even though demand for cocoa is growing, the desperation of the farmers combined with their weak bargaining position and the ability to source more commodity cocoa (including some that is smuggled from neighbouring countries) means that the prices paid for commodity cocoa barely generates enough income for many farmers to survive. And as the C4 Dispatches programme graphically shows, these farmers not only can’t afford to pay to send their children to school, but they are so desperate that they have to put their children to work in harvesting cocoa.

Note: This is NOT a criticism of the Ghanaian government; they don’t want their children to have to work in unsafe conditions and not go to school. They do have laws against this. But they also know that over 90% of their cocoa farmers don’t make the living income benchmark.

So why can’t certification solve this problem?

For the last few decades, some amazing work has been done to help consumers access ‘ethical’ and ‘environmental’ brands where a price premium is paid to the farmers. In many crops it’s worked wonders; for example, Fair Trade bananas.

In the world of craft chocolate, Zotter pioneered organic and fairly traded chocolate in Austria. And here in the UK, even though it’s more ‘mass produced’ than ‘craft’ the work that Divine has done with Fair Trade chocolate and Kuapa Kokoo in Ghana is inspiring.

But unfortunately Fair Trade, along with other certifications and labels, just isn’t enough to break the poverty loop of commodity chocolate. Unlike, for example, speciality coffee, these certification initiatives have failed to break through and change consumer’s attitudes to paying enough for chocolate such that this materially changes the livelihoods of cocoa farmers.

At the risk of vastly over simplifying, here are some of the reasons why ‘certification’ isn’t a panacea in cocoa and chocolate (note: This is NOT to say that choosing a Fair Trade or organic supermarket bar is no different from buying another mass produced bar; rather it’s arguing to do more).

1. Certification is REALLY hard, expensive and even dangerous to do for cocoa. And when it comes to a commodity crop (aka hard to trace and distinguish), it’s hard to enforce. So it’s perhaps not that surprising that C4’s Dispatches found so many abuses. At the same time it’s a credit to Ghana that Channel 4’s Dispatches were able to make the programme that they did… there are many other places in West Africa where making this programme would have been a lot less safe, and certification even trickier to get right.
2. A lot of certification and labelling is, to put it mildly, ‘hogwash‘ or at best ‘greenwash‘.  
   • Some labels like “raw” and “ethical” may sound good, but they are utterly meaningless (a bit like the term “Belgian Chocolate”. Read more about reading labels HERE). 
   • Other certifications are really confusing; for example, mass balance fair trade upsets many consumers when they realise that the “fair trade” bar they’ve just bought may well have no fair trade beans in them (see HERE for more).
   • And there are now so many company labels (like Cadbury’s ‘Cocoa Life’) that it’s impossible for most consumers to keep track  and know what really is what.
3. Consumers just won’t pay enough. Working out how much of a ‘premium’ consumers will pay for ‘Fair Trade’ is notoriously difficult; it varies by product type and also consumer. But even for Fair Trade coffee (one of the highest premiums with the highest acceptance rates), its only about 20%. And whilst this premium is welcome news for any farmer, in the case of a male cocoa farmer earning less than 85¢ a day (or 25¢ a day for a female cocoa farmer), this still means they are less than halfway to securing a minimal living income for West Africa.
4. Ethical and environmental certifications don’t guarantee quality. Fair trade and organic are about how something is grown and harvested. They aren’t about ‘taste and flavour’. By comparison, ‘specialty coffee’ is in part defined by measuring the quality of the beans on the coffee farm (which may also be organic, fair trade, etc.). But in cocoa it’s very different; even “fine” cocoa is allowed to have up to 3% defects (e.g., mould, under fermentation, etc.) and it’s still certified organic, Fair Trade, etc. (hat yip to Martin Christy here).

Bottom line: These certifications persist in treating cocoa and chocolate like a commodity ingredient, where price and volume are all important and flavour can be synthesised with additives in the factory. And in the case where you’ve few buyers but lots of desperate farmers, this inevitably leads to the awful situation shown in the Cadbury exposé.

Why craft chocolate is the way forward:

As in specialty coffee, artisan cheese, craft beer, premium olive oils, malt whiskies, craft gins, fine wines, and almost every other food and drink, consumers will pay more if a product tastes better (and has more kudos and coolness). And these price premiums are FAR higher than any Fair Trade premium.

Craft chocolate clearly has oodles more flavour complexity, length and depth than can be found in mass produced chocolate which relies on additives, fortifiers and, above all, sugar. (And we think it’s a lot cooler, and far more impressive to serve at your next dinner party).

And craft chocolate makers know that they have to pay the farmers more for the extra work involved in planting, growing, harvesting, fermenting, drying and transporting these speciality beans. The premium paid by craft chocolate, and its long term contracts, really does break through; the premium craft chocolate makers pay for their beans is anywhere from two to over ten times the commodity cocoa prices, and way more than even the highest fair trade premiums.

However, even though these craft chocolate bars cost less than a round of beers in a pub, many consumers recoil at the thought of a £4, £5 or £6 bar of chocolate (or £8-10 Easter egg). And whereas specialty coffee now accounts for over 20% of all coffee spend in the UK, craft chocolate isn’t even 0.02% of the £5b plus spent on chocolate in the UK each year.

In part this is because mass produced chocolate has persuaded consumers that they shouldn’t expect to pay more than £1 for their ‘sugar rush’ of a chocolate bar. And this perpetuates the vicious cycle of commodity cocoa. The only way that a bar of chocolate can cost £1 is, as the Dispatches programme shows, for the ingredients to cost less than 11p (see minute 8). And this is only achievable through ‘commodity cocoa’; paying less than a living income to the cocoa farmers, and by using LOTS of even cheaper sugar (which is also highly addictive).

It’s not easy to break this ingrained habit. Humans are pre-programmed to like sugar, and chocolate is an amazing vector for “sweet delight”. At the same time, humans are unique in delighting in savouring flavour; and craft chocolate has more flavours than just about anything.

So we really believe that if you can break the sugar habit and upgrade to craft chocolate you can help break the vicious cycle of poverty, child labour and deforestation that are all inherent in commodity cocoa and mass produced chocolate.

Conclusion

We need to stop treating chocolate as a commodity where price is all important, where the primary ingredient of a chocolate bar is sugar, and where a mass produced bar’s taste and flavours are created through cheap additives, enhancers, sweeteners and sugar.

And we need to start to read the label. We need to check the ingredients on the reverse of the pack. We need to look for where your bar (or Easter egg) is really made (as opposed to processed and assembled). And we need to look on the label for where your beans really come from (i.e. the farm and co-op, not just the “single origin” country, occasionally listed on the front).

And we need to avoid being distracted, and misled, by a bunch of great sounding, but effectively meaningless, phrases like “Cocoa Life”, “slavery-free”, “ethically sourced” etc. We have to move beyond greenwashing environmental stickers. These distract from the real issue.

Notes:

i) This post is NOT arguing for a boycott of West African chocolate. Ghana, The Ivory Coast, Cameroon, etc. aren’t to blame for the way that ‘big chocolate’ has commoditised cocoa. Nor is it a criticism of Fair Trade. Rather, it’s a plea to upgrade to craft chocolate, and savour the flavour of great beans, and pay a little more to reward farmers for work.

ii) Whenever child slave labour is discussed, we inevitably get asked about Tony’s Chocolonely. Tony’s is a marketing machine, and has done an amazing job of (re)alerting the world to the problems of child labour in cocoa. But we side with Anne Riggs here who has evicted them from her ‘Slave Free Chocolate‘ organisation. Check the Tony’s labels: The primary ingredient is sugar. And try figuring out where their beans really come from, and how, and where, their chocolate is processed. For our ‘two cents’ please, SEE HERE.

Both environmentally and socially, mass produced chocolate has detrimental effects on our world. The ethics of big chocolate are often shady – shrouded behind jargon which is anything but transparent. We rarely know where makers like Cadbury and Nestle really source their beans from, or how the farmers who grow those beans are treated. Cheap chocolate bars come at a price: the exploitation of cocoa growers and the destruction of the environment.

A recently published infographic from the BBC showed that chocolate sourced from the rainforest can actually have a larger carbon footprint than low-impact beef. By placing chocolate alongside a number of other every-day foods, this shows us just how damaging chocolate can really be to the environment.

Fortunately, none of this means you have to give up chocolate. There is an ethical alternative to your favourite supermarket treat: craft chocolate. In this section we will explore the ethical dilemmas posed by the mass produced chocolate industry and, eventually, how the craft chocolate movement can resolve them.

The Dark History of Chocolate

The current problems within the chocolate industry are rooted in a colonialist history. It can be traced back to the Spanish conquistadors who used the ‘encomienda’ system in the American colonies to manage the labour intensive process of picking and processing cacao.

Although the system was intended to be mutually beneficial, the Spaniards ruthlessly exploited native peoples by forcing them into hard labour. Things only got worse by the 17th century when cocoa became a mainstream commodity amongst the European upper classes. This explosion in demand was met by a systematic turn towards slavery.

Even with the gradual abolition of slavery from the 1800s, the exploitation of workers continued – only in different forms. As we say in our full article on the matter; it was slavery in different packaging.

And the problem hasn’t gone away…

Cocoa’s colonial history has had long-term impacts which have yet to be fully resolved. Still, human rights abuses, low pay, and child labour run rampant throughout the chocolate industry. Growers and farmers are rarely treated with the respect they deserve.

Only instead of imperial traders, today we have the ‘Big Five’ of chocolate: Cadbury, Nestlé, Hershey, Mars, Ferrero – all of which have been involved in exposés regarding their use of child labour.

The problem with mass produced chocolate

Mass produced chocolates poses a host of ethical problems, contributing to climate change as well as the exploitation of the people who grow their beans.

By attempting to mass produce cocoa beans, big chocolate companies have exacerbated pre-existing problems of deforestation and water-shortages in rainforests everywhere.

Furthermore, big chocolate companies have so far been unsuccessful in ending their harmful practices. Callebaut didn’t partner with Cocoa Horizons Foundation until 2015 and since then has admitted to being unsuccessful in ending their use of child labour.

It’s becoming more and more difficult to assess whether or not big chocolate companies are using ethical practices. They’re tuning in to consumer demands for more ethical production and subsequently adapting their brand message to appeal to our societal conscience. Because many terms like “bean to bar” and “organic” aren’t patented, they can get away with selling bars as more ethical than they actually are.

However, we’ve tried to uncover at least some of what big chocolate doesn’t want you to see.

Child Labour

Whilst the chocolate industry earns around $100 billion in annual profits, the farmers see hardly a tiny fraction of this staggering figure. Farmers are left with so little money that they have no choice but to get help from their families – including their children.

Some children simply help on their family’s farm, but others face more dire circumstances as they are sold into slavery by their families or trafficked.

Since signing the 2001 Harkin Engel Protocol, big chocolate companies have made nothing but empty promises, failing to meet targets on reducing their exploitation of child labour.

The conversation about child labour in craft chocolate…

Some anthropologists have argued that the current conversations about child labour in the chocolate industry aren’t as helpful or altruistic as we think they are.

Of course, it definitely is in everyone’s best interest to actively campaign against the enslavement and trafficking of children within the cocoa industry. However, the broader conversations around child labour on family cocoa farms may require more nuance.

For example, the childcare available to most parents in West Africa is expensive and not readily available. Many parents are faced with the choice of leaving children unattended at the village are taking them with them to the farm.

As Amanda Berlan argued, ‘In the context of cocoa, child labor is not a violation of labor rights occurring in a social vacuum; it is symptomatic of a much wider set of issues relating to child welfare which, problematically, are not receiving the attention they deserve.’ (October 2021). For the full article see here.

Unpacking “Fairtrade”

We are frequently asked whether or not our chocolate is Fairtrade. This is a complicated question in the context of the cocoa industry.

Truthfully, Fairtrade have done incredible work in raising global awareness around ethical, sustainable relationships across the world’s supply chain. But it was designed for large-scale crops like sugar or bananas which grow on large farms and plantations.

Cocoa, on the other hand, is not grown under the same conditions and is therefore less suited to the Fairtrade label. Because so long as it’s treated as a mass produced commodity, the longer malpractices in the cocoa industry will be able to continue.

Beyond Fairtrade…

So we believe that, whilst Fairtrade certainly has its merits, the long-term solution for making the chocolate industry more ethical is to look beyond Fairtrade.

With this in mind, we wrote a series of some of our makers and how their practices go above and beyond the Fairtrade standards.

You can read about:

• Forever Cacao
• Luisa Abram
• Pacari
• Fruition Chocolate

What makes craft chocolate an “ethical alternative”

By supporting craft chocolate makers like the ones listed above, you are supporting the farmers who grow their cacao in sustainable and ethical ways. Craft chocolate makers often handpick the farmers themselves, so they can rely upon the quality of these beans as well as their low carbon footprint.

Craft chocolate makers also generally pay cocoa growers more for their beans; Marc, Belvie‘s co-founder, says they pay four to five times the global market price for their cocoa beans. This means the growers can afford to live comfortably whilst continuing to grow high quality beans which will be turned into the craft chocolate you get to eventually enjoy!

What can we do to make the chocolate industry more ethical?

To upturn such a deeply ingrained system, it will take a broader shift in mindset to make the chocolate industry more ethical.

First, think about what sort of chocolate we are buying, and where the chocolate bar sources its cacao from. Read the label on the back; does it say something about the beans’ origin and where the bar was made? Is the bar only made up of ingredients that your grandmother would know?

Savour our chocolate; it’s not a commodity! Avoid the supermarket offers and pay that little bit extra for better chocolate (because you know that extra is being spent on ensuring growers are paid fairly and to reduce the bars carbon footprint).

Trust in the craft chocolate makers to provide higher quality chocolate than what the big companies could offer (this should be the easiest part).

Here at Cocoa Runners we’ve done the hard work for you when it comes to ethical chocolate obsession. We’ve tasted in excess of 2000 chocolate bars, yet exclusively stock just 250 bars from the makers that best reflect our values – meaning our delicious chocolate really is good for the soul.

You can be sure that our brave and rebellious chocolate makers are using innovative solutions to help repair some of the damage done to this industry worldwide – one small and important step at a time.

To celebrate their gallant efforts, we’ve compiled a list of 5 of the most ethical chocolate bars. So when you’re enjoying the delicious taste of your next bite, you can transport yourself to the very origin of the cocoa – and know that you’ve done your part.

Enjoy our top 5 tales of victory in the world of chocolate production…

1. Original Beans – The story of Gorilla warfare

Image Credit: Flickr User: Noel Reynolds

The lush rainforest canopy is essential to the flavour and intensity of the cacao beans used in Original Beans chocolate, thus for every bar of chocolate sold, a tree is planted* in the Virunga national park rainforest where this sustainable cacao is developed.

Not only does this scheme help conserve the beautiful rainforest, it is also essential to providing a habitat for the last remaining 800 mountain gorillas in the world, who happen to reside in this forest.

Park rangers and Gorilla caretakers fight everyday to fend off cruel military militia and money-hungry oil companies who are desperate to poach the resources of this incredible area. See the link below to watch an exclusive trailer of “Virunga – The movie”, a documentary demonstrating these issues.

Shop the latest bars from Original Beans today >>

2. Pacari – Santiago’s little helpers

This company has absolutely flawless ethics when producing its award-winning chocolate. Every fine detail of production is planned with a deep consideration for the communities and individuals farming cacao for Pacari in Equador, and the company pays a significant premium over market prices to ensure that their small-scale farmers are fairly compensated for their products.

Santiago, the founder of Pacari, recalls an anecdote about a farmer who had been recently producing far less cacao than usual, and who after some enquiry admitted he had suffered a back injury when carrying the beans across the mountains. Santiago gave the farmer a donkey (which would have cost the equivalent of a year of the farmer’s wage), which allowed the man to improve his income above and beyond his pre-injury level. This practice became commonplace for the farmers.

Check out the Pacari range today >>

 3. The Grenada Chocolate Company – Pirates of the Caribbean

This exquisitely eco-friendly company use sailboats to ship their chocolate bars across the ocean by wind, making the journey completely carbon neutral.

But the goodness doesn’t stop there, as the Grenada factory is solar powered entirely by the beautiful Caribbean sunshine.

Mott Green, the late founder of Grenada (pictured above), was the first to break the government monopoly that controlled the sale of cocoa in the Caribbean. For the very first time, farmers were able to sell their beans directly to chocolate makers without being harshly exploited by middlemen.

Try a bar from The Greneda Chocolate Company today >>

 4. Menakao – Fair Trade gone platinum

At Menakao, cocoa is bought at 5 times over that of standard Fair Trade price. The company decided not to ask for the official Fair Trade agreement, as this is extremely costly. Instead, they have invested in the well-being of their employees.

The production of chocolate onsite brings 4 more times local income to the community, therefore Menakao built a chocolaterie maintained by 20 full time and 15 temporary workers. Transportation is arranged for the employees to and from the chocolaterie, and things we take for granted such as air-conditioning and hot showers are great compensations for their hard work. They have free lunch every working day, and social security and retirement plans are provided with their contract.

Every worker has an average of 3.5 persons dependent on his or her salary – so the profit raised from Menakao chocolate sales indirectly benefits many in the wider community.

See the full range of Menakao bars today >>

5. Askinose – The Chocolate University

This Missouri based company source cacao beans from many different regions across the world. The company is committed to building long-term relationships with their farmers, and providing a sustainable source of income for members of the community – particularly the women. In fact, Askinose have recently begun working with a new female-led Tanzanian farmer group, led by local Mama Rahabu.

Askinose are also actively concerned with educating others about the communities that farm their cacao. They set up Missouri’s very own chocolate university, which organises trips for students at the local Missouri high school to volunteer in places like Mwaya in Tanzania. In past years, the chocolate university has funded the first textbooks at the local school, and a deep-water well for the village – which provides clean water to the 2000 residents who live in Mwaya.

Check out bars from Askinose today >>

Chocolate is big business. We’re eating more chocolate than ever, but we often forget where this wonderful food comes from: the beans. But the supply chain for the beans is causing more harm to the world than ever before; to both nature and people. This is an overview on the detrimental effects of commercial cacao production.

The Environment

The commoditisation of chocolate is ravaging rainforests everywhere. Between 1990 and 2015, forest cover in the Ivory Coast, one of the largest producers of cacao beans, has gone from over 25% to under 4%.

We were talking to Marc, co-founder of Belvie chocolate. He says that cacao is not that profitable a crop, especially when selling to the big companies like Callebaut and Nestle.

Growing cacao in bulk, such as is the case with the CCN51 varietal, will only cause more deforestation. Trees are being cut down to make way for the cocoa plantations which supply big chocolate. Even then, cacao does not grow in bulk very well, it takes years before a tree bears the fruit.

But we’re entering a vicious cycle here: one chocolate bar takes 1500-2000 litres of water to make; around the water used if you have a bath every single day for a month.

When trees are cut down, water previously held within the soil and roots and trunks are gone, stopping the water cycle in its tracks. Soon there won’t be any water left for cacao to grow.

Cocoa pods need high humidity and rainfall to grow. We are leading ourselves into a cacao and water shortage here. Cacao is not the only killer in commercial bars; there are also the additives. Soy farmers are devastating the Amazon to feed animals; especially cattle; and indirectly supply the soy lecithin and milk powder found in commodity chocolate.

The People

Cacao growing has long had a problematic history. Despite Cadbury’s Bournville model village for their factory workers, their cocoa beans were sourced from Sao Tome, a small and fertile island where slaves harvested the cocoa right into the beginning of the 20th century.

The problems still haven’t gone away. Only recently has commercial chocolate decided to get their act together.

It’s only been since 2015 that Callebaut has partnered with the Cocoa Horizons Foundation to try to eliminate child labour or slavery in their supply chains. But even they admit that children still work in the cacao plantations in hazardous environments.

An estimated 1.56 million children work in cocoa production in Ghana and Ivory Coast, the largest cocoa producers in the world, according to research from 2018-19.

You might say that programmes like Fairtrade are changing the farmers’ lives for the better. In fact, Fairtrade is not all that beneficial for the farmers.

To qualify for Fairtrade and Organic labels, the farmers need to pay for that certification. However, more often than not, the farmers simply cannot afford it.

The global market price for cacao simply isn’t high enough. Fairtrade only works when raw products are bought in bulk; think how cheap and how plentiful Fairtrade bananas are. But because cacao farmers tend to have small plantations, they are not profiting from Fairtrade certification. Not only are cacao farmers hindered by Fairtrade, but coffee farmers too!

To make the living income, farmers are encouraged to produce bulk cacao to be sold at the global market price. They need to have bigger yields to make up for the costs despite their small plantations. So, farmers will mix their good and their bad beans together and craft chocolate suffers. Even then, the global prices for cacao fluctuate, and when they fall, the farmers suffer the economic hardships.

If the farmers are unable to balance the books with cacao, they end up cutting down their cacao trees and abandoning the crop for cash produce, like pomelo in Vietnam, or pineapples in Costa Rica.

How is craft chocolate fixing this?

By supporting craft chocolate makers, you are supporting the farmers who are growing cacao in eco-friendly and sustainable ways. Makers will choose cacao farmers themselves, whom they can trust to make high-quality cacao beans.

Craft chocolate makers will pay these farmers higher prices for better beans. Marc says that Belvie pays their cacao farmers four to five times the global market price for cocoa beans.

You also support those who don’t grow cocoa. Some craft chocolate makers, like Belvie in particular, will look for farmers who will supply them with cane sugar, and they only look for the best!

As we’ve said before, organic and Fairtrade labels potentially deceive the customers. The direct trade model of craft chocolate is far more beneficial than Fairtrade for the farmers.

Farmers are benefiting from the higher price: They can afford their daily living income and continue to grow cocoa beans for better quality craft chocolate, which you can then enjoy!

What can we do?

It will take a shift in mindset. First, think about what sort of chocolate we are buying, and where the chocolate bar sources its cacao from.

Read the label on the back; does it say something about the beans’ origin and where the bar was made? Is the bar only made up of ingredients that your grandmother would know?

Savour our chocolate; it’s not a commodity! Avoid the supermarket offers and pay that little bit extra for better chocolate.

Trust in the craft chocolate makers to provide a better chocolate that what the big companies could offer.

We the consumers can control what sort of chocolate we want. The benefits to you, the farmers, and the environment are well worth that little bit extra on the wallet.

Sugar, milk, chocolate, cocoa butter, a sprinkling of additives, and… child labour?

That’s the hidden ingredient in mass-produced, commodity chocolate they don’t tell you about. That’s the secret to cheap chocolate.

Around 70% of the world’s supply of cocoa comes from two nations in West Africa: Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana. Whole communities in these regions are dedicated to growing this commodity crop for their livelihood: 60% of Cote d’Ivoire’s revenue comes from cocoa exports.

The cocoa here is sold to a majority of chocolate companies, including the ‘Big Five’ (Cadbury, Ferrero, Hershey, Mars, and Nestlé) that dominate the production of chocolate. As the chocolate industry grew over the years, companies raced to source cocoa for the lowest possible prices, trapping the inhabitants in a vicious cycle of poverty and underdevelopment.

Child Labour on Farms

The chocolate industry earns around $100 billion in annual profits, yet the majority of farmers don’t even see a tiny fraction of this figure.

The inequality in the supply chain is staggering; according to the Fairtrade Foundation, farmers that grow the crops only receive about 6% of the revenue, compared to 44% for retailers and 35% for manufacturers.

The average daily income per farm is approximately $2.70, an amount that has to be divided amongst all the workers. To keep their prices competitive, farmers often turn to using child labour.

Low prices in the cocoa industry have left smallholder farmers with low incomes and with no choice but to take their children out of school and have them help on the farm.

For other children, the situation is much dire.

They are kidnapped, sold into enslavement by their families, or trafficked from poorer regions like Mali and Burkina Faso. Traffickers take advantage of the poverty and economic desperation of families, enticing them with false promises of great opportunities.

These children are exploited by farmers, who force them to perform long, dangerous labour, sometimes beating and threatening those who attempt to escape.

Sweet Nothings from Big Chocolate

Back in September 2001, eight big brands including Nestlé, Mars, and Hershey signed the ‘Harkin Engel Protocol’ to eliminate the worst forms of child labour in cocoa growing.

They agreed to eradicate 70% of the worst forms of child labour by 2020; a deadline they have missed.

They also missed interim targets in 2005, 2010 and 2015, yet the large chocolate companies insist they condemn child labour, pointing to their various programs to improve the conditions of cocoa production.

Campaigners, however, say these programs have made little impact, and that it’s too little, too late.

Research from NORC (National Opinion Research Centre) at the University of Chicago in 2020 reported that 43% of all children aged between 5 and 17 in these two countries work on cocoa farms. Instead of reducing, the overall proportion of children working on farms has actually increased by 14% in the last decade.

In total, an estimated 1.56 million children are involved in hazardous work: using sharp machetes to hack open pods, carrying heavy loads, undertaking land clearing, and being exposed to agrochemical products.

Two decades after child workers became an international issue, it seems far from being solved.

Recently, the US Supreme Court ruled that Nestlé and Cargill can’t be sued for child slavery on African farms from where they buy their cocoa. Six Malian men alleged that they were trafficked to cacao farms in Cote d’Ivoire and forced to work for 12-14 a day, with no pay beyond basic food.

The court ruled 8-1 that the companies were not legally liable for what had happened because the abuse happened outside of the U.S.

‘Big Chocolate’ continues to avoid corporate accountability, perpetuating institutionalised poverty in these nations.

Raise the Bar!

What is a sweet treat for us is a bitter reality for millions of children labouring to provide these products at low prices.

For change to happen, we, as consumers, need to hold companies accountable.

We need to stop buying from companies that continue to exploit their workers.

To create great craft chocolate, makers have to work directly with farmers over the long term. They realise, and seek to persuade us consumers, that farmers need to be encouraged to grow fine beans; not just as many beans as possible for as low a price as possible.

At Cocoa Runners, we seek transparency and always tell you both about the maker and the farmer for all our bars.