Bittersweet: Chocolate, Children and Ethics
Dr. Bama Athreya is Executive Director of the International Labor Rights Forum, an organization dedicated to achieving just and fair treatment to workers worldwide. Last year, I had an opportunity to interview Dr. Athreya for a Fair Trade Month Radio Mom Show episode. Here is a transcript of that interview….
RM: Now chocolate is certainly one of the most loved commodities in the world, and with Halloween holiday approaching this month, I would think that October is a pretty big one for the chocolate industry here in the States, but Bama, how big of a business is chocolate?
BA: It is a huge business. Statistics that we’ve found estimate that Americans consume about $13 billion worth of chocolate candy a year, so there is a lot of money in it. The money is, by and large, concentrated in the hands of a handful pretty giant, multinational corporations—some of the names you know and love are Hershey’s, M&M Mars, Nestlé, and they are the biggies in the industry and bringing in billions of dollars a year in chocolate sales. Halloween season is the big holiday for them—this is when they sell the most chocolate.
RM: The primary ingredient in chocolate is cocoa, which, of course, is harvested in the form of the cocoa bean. But Bama, where are most of these beans grown? Where do they usually come from?
BA: Almost half of the world’s chocolate is produced in one country—Ivory Coast, in West Africa. Another 20% or so of the world’s supply is produced in Ghana, so you have really the majority of the world’s supply coming from West Africa and mostly from Ivory Coast, and the rest of it is scattered over many tropical countries—Indonesia, Ecuador, Venezuela. Ivory Coast is the country we have been most concerned about and it is the giant producer of this commodity.
RM: Who determines how much the farmers who actually harvest their beans are paid for their cocoa?
BA: The companies will tell you that no one determines it—they will tell you it is the invisible hand of the free market at work.
I should back up and say we got involved in this issue about seven years ago when we first heard reports of the trafficking of children in West Africa for use in the Ivory Coast cocoa harvest. We sent a researcher there—we have had a person go back and forth several times now—and we found that there was a very small handful of exporting companies that controlled the cocoa trade. Those names are not quite as visible as the ones I mentioned earlier—Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Barry Callebut, those are the big cocoa traders—and they have a huge say in the establishment of the price for the farmers.
RM: Is it safe to say, though, that the farmers are usually underpaid?
BA: The farmers are starving! It is very sad. We had staff people come back and report that the farmers were barely making enough to cover the [costs]. In some cases they were leaving cocoa on the trees because they couldn’t afford to harvest it once they had grown it. They are really living on the margins of subsistence, and considering how much the industry is worth and how much we are willing to pay for our chocolate, it is very, very tragic how much suffering there is in the cocoa farms of West Africa.
RM: I would imagine that being heavily dependent on the production and sale of cocoa and not being paid well for the cocoa supplied would contribute to wide-spread poverty. You are saying this really is the case in the Ivory Coast?
BA: It is the case. The farmers are poor and in most cases getting poorer. It doesn’t seem to matter how much the world prices go up and down, when you get to the level of a farmer that is very isolated in a remote part of the country, they are just dependent on these middlemen who trade the stuff, so they are just taking what they can get.
RM: Bama, what sorts of measures have farmers resorted to in an effort to eek out some sort of a profit despite the low sale prices?
BA: There is not much they can do in a country like Ivory Coast because they are quite fragmented. You’ve got a lot—and this isn’t just the case with cocoa, but it is a story you can see all over the world—many many small farms and small farmers and they don’t really have any control over their own economic livelihoods because they’re not, we think of them as independent farmers, but really they are not. You can think of them as labor on hire to these global traders who trade cocoa and other commodities and are merely employees. The problem for them is that because they are so isolated one from another, they have a hard time organizing to try to jointly push for a higher price.
One thing we have seen in Ghana in particular, but even in Ivory Coast, farmers are starting to form cooperatives. That is one thing they can do—one way they can take back some power. In particular—and one of the things we have been encouraged by—is farmers organizing into cooperatives that then opt out of the whole trading system and opt into a system called fair trade, which guarantees them a sustainable price for their cocoa.
In Ghana, I think there are tens of thousands of farmers who are at this point organized into Fair Trade cooperatives and are producing for that market. In Ivory Coast, it is something around 12,000 to 14,000 farmers that are organized and participating in the Fair Trade system. In a way, it is a drop in the bucket, but on the other hand, it is 12,000 to 14,000 farmers that are better off than they would be otherwise.
RM: Is there a correlation between the price of cocoa and poverty and the employment of children in the industry?
BA: There is definitely a correlation! What we first saw when we started doing this research was that it is almost impossible, as I said, to maintain a sustainable living wage off of harvesting the cocoa, so you want the cheapest possible labor inputs. We were seeing a lot of trafficking—and we are still seeing some, a little bit less than there was—but we are seeing children that are trafficked from one country to another to work on the cocoa harvest. It is because they are able to be controlled, be exploited, they are not paid for their labor, and that just makes the price of the commodity cheaper.
Honestly, we have spent a lot of time in West Africa. It is not as if the farmers themselves mean to exploit children but the prices they get are so low and they are trapped on their land, it is the only resource they have, they have to harvest that cocoa any way they can because it is the only means they have to bring in some cash and sustain themselves.
RM: What is life like for the children working in the cocoa industry?
BA: The only children we managed to interview were children who had escaped from the farms on which they were working and had run away and been given shelter by an NGO and that was how we were able to reach them and talk to them.
They had stories of being kept confined on the farms in barracks that had barbed wire around them so they couldn’t escape, being threatened with severe punishment if they tried to escape, having gotten wounds while they were harvesting the beans—they harvest the beans with machetes and tools that are very unsafe for kids to be handling—but they wouldn’t have their wounds treated, they would just be left there. So they are very dramatic stories of what happened. The kids were, very often, lured by false promises from middlemen who said they would be doing other things, who never told them what the real conditions of work would be and were tricked into working on the plantations instead.
RM: One thing I have heard in several conversations is that without access to employment, many children and their families would not be able to feed themselves. What do you say to the idea of Western do-gooders who do not understand the connection between the employment of children and their survival?
BA: Our basic position on this—and it’s not one that we are making up here in Washington, DC, it is one that comes from the activists that we work with in places like West Africa and South Asia—is that all children have the right to access to basic education.
I’ll tell you something, Kemi, I have spent a lot of time myself in very poor villages, mainly in India and southeast Asia, and met with people whose families have been in debt-bondage for generations, and one thing that is really amazing is that if parents have a choice to send their kids to school—if that is actually a real choice for them—they will do it. Nobody wants to have their kids to work, certainly no one wants to put their kids into debt-bondage or see them trafficked. Nobody does—it is universal, not just a Western value. Just ask a parent, they want their kids to get some more education so they can get a better job so they can have a better life and can, presumably, support their parents when they are older.
We have seen in these little villages in India, for example, schools and education programs set up and the parents become advocates—and these are parents who have no education themselves—and they will become advocates for education because they really want their children to be able to go to school.
We are talking about West African and Ivory Coast, when we went out to the cocoa-growing regions and met with some of these farmers who had no schools anywhere within miles and miles and they were thinking about their own children and they had no option to find a school to put them in. One thing that was a great story of what we saw happen was on one of these Fair Trade cooperatives—I mentioned that we work with farmers who had managed to find ways to organize and participate in a Fair Trade system. (What Fair Trade is is it provides guarantees of sustainable wages for the farmers and basic labor protections, labor conditions and social conditions. You can participate as consumers in the Fair Trade system by looking for the Fair Trade label.) But one thing we saw on Ivory Coast, when farmers had a little bit extra money working with this cooperative, they refurbished an abandoned school nearby. They put their own money into rehabilitating the local school so their kids could go to school.
RM: One thing here in the United States is that we do have a lot of educational options. Children are able to either receive schooling or not, and even if they do not, they have access to lots and lots of different materials and information—we do have access as parents—but can you say a little about why schooling is so important in developing countries?
BA: It is important because children need options for a future. We have been in regions where things are so bleak, you can’t imagine where, as I said, families have been in debt-bondage for generations. They have been serfs or slaves to landholders for generations. The only way they can get their kids out of that and have them escape from the bleak landscape of no options is for the children to learn how to read and write and to develop some skills that get them beyond having nothing they can possibly do themselves but the brute labor that requires nothing but the strength of your hands and your arms. So education is important because it gives kids a future.
RM: Now the kids who end up working in the cocoa industry, do they generally come to work voluntarily? What percentage have you found that are actually trafficked?
BA: There are no good statistics, so I cannot answer on percentages, but that’s not accidental, it’s intentional. It has been a real challenge, we’ll say, to collecting reliable information in the region and it’s a challenge that’s as much posed to us by corporations than it is by governments. But we have found anecdotally that the children that we have interviewed are sent by their families. But we went to one of the supplier countries—we went to Mali, which is one of the places these kids originate from—and the families are lured by middlemen who say that their children are going to work in a shop or doing something else. The families in Mali, again, wanting their kids to have more options, send them off without really realizing what the conditions are they are going to.
RM: But we have to say that some of the chocolate that is imported to the United States has actually come from cocoa that has been harvested by child slaves. Can we say that?
BA: We’d have to say that because the companies, for the seven years that we have been working on this, have refused to document and provide to us any proof that they are sourcing from “clean” farms. So except for that little niche of Fair Trade chocolate, you’d have to just assume that all of it is tainted by child labor.
RM: Which companies buy this cocoa?
BA: All of the major chocolate producers, so we are talking about Nestlé, M&M Mars, Hershey, Kraft Foods—which is actually one of the biggest providers of chocolate products in the US—you’d really have to say that all the major chocolate producers are in some way complacent in this child labor, child trafficking problem.
RM: Well, Nestlé’s been involved in litigation regarding this issue. Are you able to say anything about that case?
BA: Yes. We brought suit against Nestlé because they are one of the few countries that have on-the-ground operations in Ivory Coast and they do cocoa processing in Ivory Coast. The other companies I mentioned are buying through traders, so they have one level of deniability, but Nestlé is there on the ground in Ivory Coast, they have offices, they have processing facilities, and, of course, they are on this end selling us Crunch bars and other confectionary products. We felt that Nestlé was the one company where we could bring a case and argue that they had direct knowledge and direct responsibility on the ground in Ivory Coast. That case is in the courts now—you know that legal cases move slowly, so we will have to see what’s next.
RM: Bama, what actions have been taken to try to ensure that the chocolate we consume here in the States was not made with cocoa that has been harvested by child slaves?
BA: We have been campaigning for a while now to get the major companies to do several things: We are asking them for transparency—to tell us where the cocoa originates, where are their farms? Now, I can tell you, because we have had a researcher out there, as I said, several times, we can get to their farms, we can figure out what farms are selling to who, but the major chocolate giants claim they can’t tell. They can tell—they just need to have a little motivation to tell us all, tell their consumers, where they buy their cocoa beans, what farms they buy from, and what steps they have taken to make sure those farms are respecting labor rights. As consumers, we can all ask all of the chocolate companies. We have sample letters on our website if people want to take a look at a sample letter they can send to Nestlé or any of the other major chocolate companies. Our site is laborrights.org.
Also, every Halloween, we participate in actions to support the growth of the Fair Trade-certified chocolate market by promoting Fair Trade Chocolate. I have been very pleased to see over the past few years each Halloween I am able to find more and more Fair Trade options in the stores, so we are able to give out to trick-or-treaters who come through our neighborhood Fair Trade Chocolate.
There is a Kid Action that actually one of our partners is proposing this Halloween called “Reverse Trick or Treating” and it might be something that your listeners are interested in. What they are suggesting is that reverse trick-or-treaters actually hand out Fair Trade Chocolate so that’s a way of educating people. Not only are you getting a treat from them, but you’re actually giving back a treat and they can look at it and ask, “Why are they giving me this piece of chocolate?” and so the group that is promoting that activity is giving out free Fair Trade chocolate to anyone who wants to participate in Reverse Trick or Treating. More information on that is available at ReverseTrickorTreating.org.
RM: Before we go, Bama, I want to ask you one question about the chocolate industry’s response to the request for transparency. Have they issued any statements over the years to try to, I guess, come in line with the request for transparency?
BA: No. They have issued quite a few public statements over the years to be sure, saying that they’re working on it and they are supporting various programs and they are trying to eliminate child labor in the supply chain, but I’ve been in a number of meetings over the years directly with chocolate industry representatives and have asked the question many, many times. If all these programs work, and if the farms clean up their act and they’re clean, will you guarantee that you will source from the clean farms? And the answer every time has been “No, we can not make that promise.” So even if the farmers of West Africa do the right thing and are able to clean up their supply and make sure they’re not using child labor or other abusive labor, the companies won’t commit to buy from them.
RM: Why is that?
BA: It’s about price. I hate to be a cynic, but it’s about the fact that the system as it operates now gets them the cheapest possible cocoa, and there’s no way around it. A certified system—a clean system—costs a little bit more. Not a lot more—we estimate that the average cost of switching over from conventional cocoa to Fair Trade cocoa would be about .02 cents per chocolate bar. So it’s not a lot. But I guess when you amalgamate that and you’re Nestlé, you look at the bottom line for your CEO and your board members and you say, “No, we’re not paying it.”
RM: Bama, how can moms get involved in what you’re doing in the chocolate industry? How can we help?
BA: One simple little thing that everyone can do—we all are going to be entertaining trick-or-treaters this year—is, if you can, look for some fair trade chocolate to give out to the trick-or-treaters coming through your neighborhood. That’s a very simple, easy thing for all of us to do that will make a difference, because it will send a signal to the big chocolate giants that you’re not buying their product, you’re buying fair trade product; and if they want your business then they’d better convert as well.
The reverse trick-or-treating action that I described is a real fun one; it’s one adults can do if you’re going to have a Halloween party, you can just give out fair trade chocolate to the guests of your Halloween party. One thing that I’ve done—I have a 7-year-old now and a 5-year-old, and I’ve gone to their school and have given out materials at their school, encouraging kids to get involved in the issue and to understand the issue. Kids are just great—kids are amazing, because they’ve got a natural sympathy for these issues, and they want to do something; they want to help if they can.
RM: Bama, thank you so much for joining me today on The Radio Mom Show. It has been great talking to you.
BA: Oh, it’s just been great. Thanks so much for the invitation to participate.