Yesterday, I wrote about chocolate and there is another thing that you may want to consider when you buy chocolate, which is Fairtrade. Have you thought about where the chocolate you are eating came from?
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Growing cocoa is a hard task. Cocoa is a delicate and sensitive crop and farmers must protect cocoa trees from wind, sun, pests and disease. With proper care, cocoa trees begin to yield pods at peak production levels by the fifth year and they can continue at this level for 10 years. But for all this hard work, cocoa farmers gain very little when manufacturers and retailers gain most of the profit.
Because of high demand for cocoa products, the international price of cocoa beans is rising. However, disease and age are damaging cocoa trees and the number of farmers is falling because of the poor benefits. Farmers are not getting benefit sufficiently from the rise in prices and remain in poverty as their incomes fail to keep up with rising production costs.
Fairtrade helps to make cocoa farming more sustainable through payment of the Fairtrade Premium to invest in business or community projects so farmers can better provide for themselves and their communities.
In addition to the minimum price and Premium, Fairtrade provides essential training and support farmer organizations to help them become successful business organizations. In Côte d’Ivoire, Fairtrade undertook training workshops so farmers know how to negotiate their contracts with traders and get a better deal for their members. (Excerpts from Fairtrade Foundation website)
So what can we do? One of the things we can do is to look for Fairtrade chocolate next time when we buy chocolate. I believe that if more people choose Fairtrade products, it can certainly change the world.