As consumers, we hold the power to demand change for the better
Since 1868, a heart-shaped box of chocolates has served as the pinnacle of the commercialization of Valentine’s Day. In the U.S. alone, confectionery sales leading up to Feb.14 are expected to top $3.4 billion and the Omicron variant has led to a sharp spike in the price of cocoa, chocolate’s primary ingredient. One might assume this would be good news for cocoa farmers from West Africa, the origin of 70 percent of 5 million tons of chocolate produced every year. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of collecting the profits, African farmers are faced with a survival crisis triggered by multinationals’ greed and increasingly volatile cocoa prices. What we are witnessing in Africa are unprecedented levels of deforestation and poverty fueled by the cocoa industry—which ironically was meant to be the sweet escape from hardship for the same farmers the sector is now shamelessly exploiting. In recent years, the Cocoa and Forest Initiative (CFI) has pushed for ending cocoa related deforestation. In both Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the biggest cocoa producers in West Africa, deforestation has been rapidly accelerating. A part of the issue is that much of cocoa is sourced indirectly —meaning the cocoa is bought through local traders who often operate informally with limited public oversight. Western Africa was largely deforested throughout the 20th century due to agricultural expansion and international trade of goods including cocoa. Only in recent decades, with the increasing availability of satellite technology, have we been able to scrutinize the disappearance of remaining forests which has led to more frequent storms and increased risk of deadly floods. Many cocoa trees planted in Ghana and the Ivory Coast since the 1990s are losing their productivity much sooner than predicted, partly because cocoa flourishes in shade instead of direct sunlight. As farmers are desperate for more income, they increase their farmland in a bid to sell more cocoa. The legacy of colonialism has created the chocolate industry, worth $130 billion, while most cocoa farmers earn less than $1 per day. Farmers’ share in the cocoa supply chain accounts for only 6.6 percent of the value of the final sale from a ton of sold cocoa, while manufacturers (35.
