Fair Trade Cocoa

I love love love chocolate. That is my absolute weakness. It is so hard for me to say no to a chocolate dessert. There is something sublime about biting into a bar of chocolate, savoring the bittersweetness of the delectable morsel, allowing it to coat the tongue before melting into a state of bliss.

Then I read about Fair Trade Cocoa from Marye's blog. It was disturbing to know that the food I love so much, which is often touted as the food of God, and being so heavily commercialized during any occasions where people are encouraged to buy, may not be produced under the Fair Trade.

I have not done much research into this (job hazard - I tend to research my articles before writing, especially on something new to me) but from the articles I have read after googling it, it seemed that much awareness of it was brought into light in 2001-2002.

So what is Fair Trade?

The greatest producers of cocoa beans are in Africa and many times, the farmers are not given a fair price for the cocoa beans they produced and many children are working on the farms. Some children are sold by parents or kidnapped by unscrupulous people to the farm owners. They are kept in tiny rooms and made to work on the farms = slavery.

It seemed that the price of cocoa dropped drastically in 2000, making it really harder for farmers to get out from the cycle of debt (i.e. farmers borrowed money to farm cocoa, returns from the sale could barely feed them or get them out of the debt, and so the cycle continued for the next planting/harvesting season).

But in the latest report by Fair Trade, it looked like more consumers and retailers/manufacturers are stocking fair trade cocoa and the prices of cocoa have returned to a fairer price.

Here is a list of places where you can actually get Fair Trade Cocoa in the United States. I am glad to see that Ben & Jerry, Starbucks, Seattle's Best Coffee, Dunkin Donuts are some of the places where the cocoas are produced from Fair Trade certified farmers.

I still want to find out if Valrhona and other fine gourmet chocolates are doing that too. I am a chocolate snob and usually do not eat much of the chocolate bars produced by Hersheys, Cadbury and Nestle though I do try some of the special products as evidenced by my post :p

It is definitely hard for consumers to only buy Fair Trade Cocoa which are more expensive as dollars and cents make a big difference, especially in this current economic climate when inflation is at 6%-7% for Singapore. The food shortage crisis doesn't help matters either.

But at least now I know about this and could make better informed choices in future. That chocolate I consumed could be produced by children who are slaves. Fair Trade also applies to other produce like coffee beans, tea, sugar, rice, honey...

I am quite upset about the rice situation but that will be another blog post. This current food crisis really reminded me of the comms class I took "Communication and the Transfer of Technology". One book which still stuck in my mind and is close to my heart is 50 Years is Enough: The Case Against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund edited by Kevin Danaher. Do read it if you have the time or are interested in this.

I just googled and there is a 50 Years Is Enough website too. Do check it out.