Everyone loves chocolate, whether it’s in a candy bar, ice cream or sauce. Yet not everyone finds this product of the cocoa plant sweet. The problem with chocolate is that this natural agricultural product is grown in tropical countries most of whom are very poor countries. Those who buy the cocoa and then manufacture chocolate products out of it are all huge powerful multinational companies making large amounts of money, thanks in part to the fact that the cocoa-growing countries and their farmers are poor.

The word ‘chocolate’ and ‘cocoa’ is used to describe a variety of products made from fermented, roasted and ground beans taken from the pod of the tropical cacao tree. Chocolate is a common ingredient in many kinds of sweets, ice creams, cookies, cakes, pies and desserts. It is one of the most popular flavours in the world and has been a part of the human diet for over 2,000 years. It was first discovered by the Mayan Indians in the tropical forests of South America, and used as a base for the very popular bitter, frothy drink made by mixing cocoa with chilli and other spices. This spicy drink soon spread to the neighbouring Aztecs and became part of the rituals of ancient Central American culture.

European conquerors took the drink back to Europe, where it was made with sugar instead of spices. It became so popular that instead of importing it from the Americas, many European countries started growing the cocoa tree in their own colonies in South East Asia and Africa. Now, over 70% of the world’s cocoa is grown in West Africa.

The amount of cocoa produced worldwide is approximately 3 million tonnes annually. The world’s retail chocolate business is worth an estimated US$ 42–60 billion annually and is controlled by just a few very big companies like Nestle, Cadbury Schweppes, Hershey and M&M/Mars.

The Ivory Coast is the world’s largest cocoa-producing country, providing 43% of the world’s cocoa, followed by Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil and the Cameroon. Cocoa is very important to the economies and the lives of the local people in all these countries. In Ghana, for example, cocoa accounts for 40% of total export revenues, and 2 million farmers are employed in cocoa production.

Yet, this so-called harmless confection is the source of lots of trouble. Some of the problems associated with chocolate have to do with the environment: tropical forests are being cut down to grow cocoa. Many of the places where cocoa is now grown are biodiversity hotspots where the number of species is being reduced by intensively growing this single plant species. That means birds and insects that need other plant species are also disappearing. Further environmental damage is caused by the pesticides that are needed to prevent pests from attacking the cocoa tree. One of the most common pesticides used on cocoa in West Africa is Lindane, which is banned in richer countries since it is extremely dangerous to the environment and to people. But since these tropical countries are poor, they cannot give up the income provided by chocolate.

There are also socio-economic problems that arise from poor countries being dependent on a single crop for export. This means that food crops are sidelined and local people have to buy much more expensive food brought in from outside. Also, the country becomes easily affected by the price of the crop in the international market, something they have no control over; if the prices go too low, they cannot suddenly switch to another crop. Finally, the few big international companies that control all the coca markets are able to influence entire countries with their buying power.

This is where the biggest problem with chocolate comes in: human rights violations that arise when a poor country has to compete in the international market and lacks any sort of bargaining power against large multinational companies. The worst of these violations is slavery. Though this sounds like something that would only happen in earlier times, it is very much a reality on today’s cocoa farms. And not just slavery, but child slavery. Young boys whose ages range from 12 to 16 are sold into slave labour and forced to work on cocoa farms. Why does this happen? To compete and make sure the big companies buy their cocoa, farmers have to constantly cut the cost of producing cocoa. And the usual way to go about this is by reducing how much farm workers are paid. In many cases this means using slaves who can not only be paid less, if they are paid at all, but also treated badly by making them working harder and longer hours.

One study showed that in the Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, an estimated 284,000 children work on cocoa farms. Many of them work on their own family’s farms but others are real slaves brought in from other countries. Children who are involved in the worst forms of labour abuse come from nearby countries (in the Ivory Coast, they come from even poorer countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo). Often parents in these countries sell their children, hoping they will find real work once they arrive in the Ivory Coast and then will be able to send some money home. But as soon as they are separated from their families, the young boys are made to work for little or no money at all. They work long and hard, from early in the morning till late at night.

These problems have arisen mostly because there isn’t much money to be made in growing cocoa, and international prices have been dropping. Who gets the money when you buy a chocolate candy? It’s the chocolate manufacturers, the shop that sells it to you, the government (from taxes), producers of other ingredients that go into the candy, the middlemen or buyers of cocoa from the growers… then the farmers, and, finally, the farm labourers. Cocoa farmers receive about 1 penny for a candy that will sell for $ .60 in the US. Yet they cannot stop growing cocoa because there is nothing else for them to do.

According to the International Cocoa Organisation, the average European eats 1.7 kilos of chocolate every year, the average American 1.3 kilos, but in Africa, where two-thirds of the world’s cocoa is grown today, the average yearly consumption is less than 150 grams. Those children working as slaves, even the farmers who work them, will most likely never taste a chocolate in their lives...

Prices of cocoa beans are low because it’s better for the chocolate companies to keep them low so they can increase their own profits. If prices rise, they can threaten to buy the beans from other sources, which would cause financial ruin in countries dependent on cocoa exports. This forces farmers to cut their labour costs, hence the slave labour, and the use of children. If the companies offered the farmers a higher and possibly fair price for the cocoa, this would ensure that slave labour on cocoa farms would die out.

One way out of this is being tried in developed countries. It’s called ‘Fair Trade’ and is an international monitoring and certification system applied to a wide variety of products that ensures a good price to the grower, prohibits any form of slavery, and, at the same time, promotes environmental sustainability. Fair trade chocolates are a bit more expensive then the usual ones, but the fair trade system guarantees that farmers receive a basic price that they can depend on, giving them the reliable sufficient income they need to support themselves. Consumers help the system by buying only chocolates that carry the fair trade certification mark. Sadly, such alternatives to the big chocolate companies do not exist in India yet.

Top 10 producers of cocoa beans (in thousands of tonnes) 1999-2000

Top 10 importers of cocoa beans (in thousands of tonnes) 1998-1999

Top 10 countries with the highest chocolate consumption (in pounds per head) 2000

-- Manoj Nadkarni

Kids For Change, February 2006