Bittersweet business: How the global cocoa industry is changing
The cocoa industry in Haiti is one of the few bright spots in an economy that's suffocating amid gang violence and political instability. Exports of fermented cocoa to Europe are having a significant impact for small Haitian producers, and helping to create jobs. Carys Garland reports from the Paris Chocolate Show. Also in the show: we speak to Tony's Chocolonely, a chocolate company that has pioneered efforts to expose exploitation and child labour in the cocoa industry.
Joke Aerts, Director of Credible Sourcing at Tony's Open Chain, says that 20 years into its mission to change the industry, the Dutch firm is being joined by competitors. "We pull competitors in and collaborate in our sourcing of cocoa (…) this better way of doing business has to become the norm."
Some 60 percent of the world’s cocoa is grown in Ghana and Ivory Coast, where child labour is rampant. Aerts says Tony’s Chocolonely "specifically chose to work where the issues that we're fighting are the most egregious. So there's about 1.56 million children in child labour in West Africa alone (…) that’s why we are focused on West Africa alone in our cocoa sourcing."
Most cocoa farmers haven't benefited from a spike in cocoa prices on global markets this year, but Aerts says that paying more for supplies is crucial to tackling the problem. "No matter what the cocoa prices are doing, Tony's Chocolonely and its mission allies (…) always commit to topping up to that living income reference price. We know that farmers need to earn more money per kilogram of cocoa in order to lift themselves out of poverty and send their children to school."
