Why Fair Trade Chocolate Makes Dollars and Sense
"Fairly-traded Maya Gold gives 5.3 pence to the cocoa farmer for every bar it sells for $1.35. Of this, 0.3 pence comes from the fair-trade premium. This may seem like a small amount, but it can make a big difference to the farmer. More important still is the cocoa content: Maya Gold contains 55% cocoa solids, whereas most of the popular bars in Britain and North America contain just 20%. So, from a typical milk-chocolate bar selling for 90p, a Ghanaian farmer can expect to see just 0.5 pence." From the New Internationalist, August, 1998.
Chocolate Profits
The big problem with Big Chocolate is that of every large industry, from corn to oil. Big business gets bigger by increasing the profit margin, not the quality of the product. In the past, a fat margin has been guaranteed by the biggest companies using the smallest amount of chocolate in their most heavily-marketed products. By thinning out the actual chocolate liquor content of a candy bar by adding milk and sugar, by adding vegetable fats and removing the cocoa butter for use in other applications, large chocolate manufacturers have managed to spend very little indeed on chocolate.
In the chocolate industry, as in most agriculturally-based markets, increasing the profit margin has been easiest at the level at which there is the least organization, the least education and the fewest economic resources-the small grower. But even Big Chocolate has come to realize that their profits can stay strong (or get stronger) if they follow the intelligent lead of the fair trade movement. If you spend some time on the website of the International Cocoa Organization, you see that the ICCO, which represents the largest of chocolate manufacturers, is discussing the importance of restricting chemical use in favor of organic, manure fertilizers; is self-mandated to follow up on and report instances of child labor encountered in the field; and recognizes the utility and necessity of shade trees and agricultural diversity.
Creating a New Niche for Humane Chocolate
At this point, it's possible that the large manufacturers have discovered the wisdom in buying and using more cacao in their products while marketing the benefits of chocolate to a public that needs education in "real chocolate" in order to appreciate it. (Hershey bought out Scharffenberger-need I say more?) Chances are that with the public's traditional leaning toward cheap, heavily milk-and-sugared candy bars, the constant consumer won't go away: targeting the foodie, the health-aware and the gourmet with higher-quality chocolate will only increase the overall market by adding new niches to already existing ones.
Until I started researching this fair trade chocolate, I didn't know the extent to which chocolate has conformed to other agricultural products in terms of being associated with chemicals, environmental degradation and human suffering. It's ironic to think that a product that exists for pure pleasure has ruined lives and lands. It's responsible for human misery and has maintained practices of injustice and downright cruelty. But it doesn't have to be that way! Cacao growing can be healthy, profitable and fair, if the cacao manufacturers and growers work interdependently and in good faith.
.... Next page
How Chocolate is made