Valentines’ Day, Or Indeed, Any Day At All

Chocolate is the solution…but at what cost?

Chocolate, one in each hand: it’s a balanced diet in anyone’s books.

Yesterday I went to a house auction. Not a soul was prepared to offer the first bid, and so, after a minute or so, out came the stingiest box of chocolates, the lure, and suddenly the bids were being tossed around like snowflakes.

I didn’t quite get that. Had the first bidder been the only bidder, the house would legally have been his (provided it was at the seller’s agreed on-the-market price), but I mean, a three dollar box of chocolates?

But obviously, we are a shallower species than I had thought. The lure worked, and the winner ended up being the top bidder on a two million dollar home!

We’ve all grown to love chocolate. It used to be a treat. But now, it’s ubiquitous.

It’s a pick-me-up when you’re feeling blue, partners a bottle of wine when you go to a dinner party, and is undoubtedly the language of love.

Emperor Montezuma maintained that an oversupply of chocolate could fend off the need for other food…and had other advantages besides!

‘Historians tell us that every night before going in to cavort with his harem, the king of the Aztecs quaffed 30 frothy cups of ‘chocolaté’ drink from a golden goblet. He then tossed the gold goblets into a lake. Later historians have noted that the Aztec king may have used the cacao drink more for a laxative than an aphrodisiac.’

Aztec people certainly linked chocolate to stamina, such that the Aztec warriors were given provisions of chocolate wafers when going into battle, which they could only eat whilst in action.

But whatever people’s beliefs were about chocolate, would we be so in love with the product if we had any idea of the industrial havoc being wreaked on the environment, just for our pleasure?

‘Thousands of miles away from the American and European homes where the majority of the world’s chocolate is devoured, lies the denuded landscape of West Africa’s Ivory Coast. The nation is the world’s largest producer of cocoa, the raw material for chocolate.’

The Ivory Coast was so named because of its large numbers of elephants who roamed the rain forests. Sadly, these animals are now in serious decline. A huge percentage of them has disappeared.

These huge, intelligent animals have been deprived of their homes as conservation lands and parks have been cleared so that companies such as Mars, Cadbury, and Nestlé can set up their cocoa businesses.

Mighty Earth, a global campaign organization that works to protect the environment, is a company that concentrates on issues such as:

• conserving threatened landscapes
• protecting oceans, and
• climate change

One of their investigations was into the cocoa industry that provides the raw material for chocolate. The companies in question on-sell the cocoa to:

‘large agribusiness companies like Olam, Cargill, and Barry Callebaut, who together control around half of global cocoa trade. Most strikingly, the investigation found that for years the world’s major chocolate companies have been buying cocoa grown through the illegal deforestation of national parks and other protected forests, in addition to driving extensive deforestation outside of protected areas. In the world’s two largest cocoa producing countries, Ivory Coast and Ghana, the market created by the chocolate industry has been the primary driver behind the destruction of forests.’

The resultant devastation is enough to challenge all of us as to whether we should continue to support such industries, or not.

Keep in mind that the Ivory Coast’s wildlife, in general, has plummeted in numbers.

Chimpanzees are now considered to be an endangered species.

Symbols of elephants have been traditionally used in sporting groups’ jerseys and boots. But perhaps not for long!

In the past elephants were at risk of being hunted by poachers, but that danger is even greater these days as the animals have been driven into small corridors, and thus, more than ever, are at the mercy of poachers.

A double-whammy for these sensitive beasts!

As you would imagine, other animals in the Ivory Coast are also threatened, as habitats are continually usurped.

It will come as no surprise to learn that poverty is the currency and the driving force behind the deforestation. Smallholder farmers are at the mercy of the large chocolate companies, and as such, they will probably never say no to a deal.

So we have two problems here.

We have an insatiable love of chocolate. We can’t imagine a world without it. But if deforestation continues, we won’t have a world in which to grow it!

Solutions must therefore be found.

But to guarantee the future of cocoa, and therefore chocolate, we need to tackle deforestation, as well as the poverty and practices that make it worse.

If we want to keep eating chocolate, we have to end deforestation.

‘Given the various obstacles to confronting climate change, it might seem strange to focus on chocolate. But deforestation is a huge problem in cocoa farming. As demand for chocolate increases, cocoa growers are accelerating production. Without the right incentives, some farmers may clear forested land to plant more cocoa trees. Taking proactive steps on deforestation is the single biggest contribution companies like ours can make to helping our younger generations have a better world to grow old in.

‘We’ve tried to tackle deforestation before with certification schemes, where food companies pay a premium for ingredients grown under independently verified environmental and social criteria. But these schemes haven’t always trickled down to drive real change on the ground. They are hard to scale up to cover the volumes required, meaning the deforestation problem remains untouched in the majority of the supply chain. And the schemes often lack a holistic approach, incentivizing improvements in one area like farming, but doing little to tackle broader issues within a community.’

But there is hope. Companies don’t want to go out of business.

We love our chocolate.

But none of us wants to see further environmental degradation.

That’s why Mondelez International, together with other cocoa companies and in collaboration with governments, co-created the Cocoa & Forests Initiative.

To that end 85% of the global cocoa companies are now on board with following another pathway, focusing on:

• prevention of further loss of forests
• attending to incomes of farmers involved
• community involvement

There’s a need to find exactly where all the cocoa farms are. Some of them are small and hard to find, so to that end, Global Forest Watch, which ‘offers the latest data, technology and tools that empower people everywhere to better protect forests,’ has been brought on board ‘to plot farms on satellite maps and analyze how they interact with forested and protected land. About 63%, or 93,000, of the farms supplying the Mondelez International Cocoa Life program in Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Indonesia have been mapped already and we know they are not in priority-protected areas. And we’ve put the map online so everyone can see it. If we do identify a problem, we ask our suppliers to flag this to the local farmers’ organization so it can take action. In time we will report cases to governments too.’

So good things are happening. ‘As an industry, we’re doing a lot. But there is a saying in Ghana: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’

Everyone must be willing to work as one, and that challenges all stakeholders to work together, as a community of caring people to care enough. This means, involving manufacturers, society in general, and retailers, to find and implement solutions.

So it’s up to all of us. Lovers of chocolate have a voice. You can choose to be part of the solution for change. If you care enough, check that what you are buying is sustainably produced.

The powers that be, know that they are under surveillance. It’s not about winning or losing. Instead, it’s about our working in partnership with industries intent on fixing what’s broken, to provide a fair outcome for farmers, with improved conditions, so that life can go on in a healing world, with chocolate.