Chocolate is indulgence, youth, love, and happiness—except when it contributes to deforestation and child labor! Make a change and this Valentine’s Day, get your sweetheart a chocolate treat that spreads your love all the way to the cocoa seeds of Africa ☺
Chocolate’s Origins: Chocolate comes from the seeds of the Theobroma cacao tree, which means “food of the gods” in Greek. The evergreen tree grows in hot, humid climates within 20 degrees of the equator. The fruits, or pods, are about the size and shape of an American football. Each tree produces about 20 pods, and each pod contains 30 to 40 cocoa seeds. A kilogram (or 2.2 pounds) of chocolate requires 300 to 600 seeds. Central American Indians sipped beverages concocted from cocoa seeds as far back as 3,000 years ago, but it wasn’t until the 19th century that chocolate was sweetened and solidified into the familiar milk chocolate bar and box of truffles.
Chocolate Today: The cocoa seed is the third most traded raw material in the world, trailing only oil and coffee. Worldwide, over 14 million people make a living cultivating cocoa, and most cocoa is grown in Africa and South America. Côte D’Ivoire, or in English known as Ivory Coast, in western Africa is the world’s leading producer, cultivating about 40% of all cocoa—cocoa accounts for more than a third of all exports from the region. Unfortunately, the industry also contributes to unrest in the area—cocoa sales funded both sides of the Ivorian Civil War from 2002 to 2007.
Many cocoa farmers who labor on large cocoa plantations live in poverty, earning as little as $30 a year. According to the U.S. State Department, hundreds of thousands of children are enslaved on these farms. In 2001, the chocolate industry made a commitment to abolish child slave labor in West Africa but has made little progress to meet that goal. Trans Fair America, a fair-trade certifier, estimates that farmers receive just 1 cent from each 60-cent candy bar sold in the United States.
Chocolateand theEnvironment: Worldwide cocoa production utilizes a chunk of land about the size of Ireland. According to the WWF, “average cocoa plantings remain productive for only 25-30 years, so expansion into new forests is the norm.” Since the cacao tree thrives in tropical areas, cocoa production contributes to rainforest destruction and massive deforestation. Only about one third of one percent of original tropical forests are covered in cocoa. However, the regional effects of cocoa cultivation can be devastating. Thirteen percent of Ivory Coast’s original forests are now dedicated to cocoa.
The practice of farming cocoa trees in the shade under native tree canopy can conserve forests. The trees add value to the land, making it economically unwise to clearcut the forest to make room for alternative crops such as soy or palm. Unfortunately, cocoa trees are not most often grown using the preferable shaded practice and are instead grown in open sunny areas cleared of trees for the purpose of growing cacao. However, cocoa trees do not thrive without a forest canopy. This is why the cocoa trees that are cultivated in full sun are hybrids, which require high levels of agrochemicals to survive. One of the most common cocoa pesticides in West Africa is lindane, an organochlorine cousin of DDT—a potentially cancer causing and now-banned pesticide in the United States. However, not all cocoa is sprayed with neurotoxins!
Organic Chocolate: Worldwide, about 2% of chocolates and 20% of cocoa seeds are certified organic. Fortunately, there may be many more organic cocoa seeds on the market than that statistic lets on. According to a recent Agence France-Presse article, “Fully 80 percent of the world’s cocoa plantations are thought to be de facto organic, run by farmers who cannot afford chemical fertilizers or pesticides… But only a tiny fraction of that output is certified organic, since few can cover the cost of a complex formal labeling process.”
There’s more to a chocolate bar than just cocoa. According to the chocolate company Cadbury, the milk in a milk chocolate bar is the source of 60% of the bar’s greenhouse gas emissions. Chocolate may also contain palm oil, an ingredient used in about half of all consumer goods that contributes to tropical deforestation. Last year, Greenpeace pressured Nestle into excluding companies from its supply chain that own or manage farms that contribute to the massive palm oil industry and thus deforestation. Greenpeace inspired thousands of activists to speak up against the palm oil industry with this video, which grotesquely illustrates chocolate’s direct link to animal welfare.
What You Can Do!
Buy fair trade certified cocoa, chocolate bars, and chocolate chips. The certification prohibits slave labor and ensures that farmers get paid fairly. Fair Trade cocoa is more likely to come from small farms that grow their coffee seeds in the shade, which repels bugs and reduces the need for pesticides, along with saving the trees! Today fair trade chocolates represent less than 1% of the world’s $60 billion chocolate market. But it doesn’t have to be this way… demand drives supply. Last Halloween, young trick-or-treaters surprised adults by giving them fair trade candies. Their message was clear: If a kid can go fair trade, so can you!
Buy organic. Organic chocolates not only contain organic cocoa seeds, but also organic milk and sugar. Additionally, no genetically engineered crops are used in the chocolate-making process. Note that the USDA organic label does not require that farmers maintain a forest canopy.
Buy shade-grown. Look for products certified by the Rainforest Alliance or the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Shade-grown chocolate is bird-friendly because it preserves the forest habitats of migratory songbirds and saves the trees.
Pay for the true cost of chocolate. Cocoa was so valuable in Mesoamerica that it was used as a form of currency in some village markets as late as the 1980s. Cacao, the term for cocoa in Portuguese, is still slang for money in parts of Brazil. The chocolate company Original Beans prices its bars at $13 because it considers the environmental and social costs of the product. The company pays farmers “exceptionally high prices for ecological conservation and quality processing,” plants trees to offset its big water footprint (2400 liters per 100 grams of chocolate), and packages its product in biodegradable, FSC certified recycled paper with soy inks and natural glues. Instead of buying four chocolate bars, indulge in just one. Moderation will make the creamy, sweet goodness taste even better, and help your waistline.
Of course, there’s more to chocolate than chocolate bars. Baking your honey a chocolate cake this Valentine’s Day? Use fair trade and organic ingredients. Stirring up a mug of hot chocolate? Start with a heaping spoon of fair trade organic cocoa powder, then add an equal amount of sugar, a dash of vanilla, and a little bit of water. Whisk the mixture into a syrupy liquid and add that to a pan of simmering milk. When made with love, chocolate can be so good ☺
