A cura di Diao Deguene, 5RA
Do you ever find yourself enjoying a piece of chocolate and wondering where it comes from and all the process it took to get to your hands ? Well in this article you will find the answers you have been looking for.
From bean to bar
First of all, let’s start with the primary ingredient, which is the cocoa bean ; cocoa mainly grows in Latin American countries but recently, the cocoa we eat is harvested and cultivated in West Africa, particularly Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire.
Growing cocoa trees is no easy work, it is hard manual and intensive work, the laborers have to walk a long distance to the cocoa trees forest, under the heat, and for a long time; they have to cut down the beans ( which are found inside a pod) with a machete, then they have to remove the white pulp surrounding the beans. At this point the clean beans need to be dried under the sun ,after being completely dry, the beans will be put into sacks which will be shipped to the companies that will process them into chocolate as we know it, like chocolate bars.
The producers’ life
Now , after reading this you will probably have noticed that the ones who have the hardest time inthis whole process are the producers , and theoretically speaking they are the ones who should receive an adequate amount of money for all their work, but sadly in reality they are the ones who get paid the least.
In fact, they are paid under 1£ a day, which is obviously not enough to maintain themselves and their families, and in many cases these workers are women who are the first ones to wake up, prepare the kids, walk a long distance to get to the forest ,work there for hours, get back home ,cook and clean, and then they are the last ones to go to sleep. They repeat this routine everyday, all of it and they still do not receive an appropriate and sufficient amount of money.
Tips on how to change this
But what can we do to help them? Actually it is very easy, the consumers just have to buy and support products with the Fair Trade logo because if a product is approved by the Fair Trade it means that in order to produce that, the rights of the producers and workers have been respected. That means that fair labor practices have been applied and a minimum wage that allows them to live and maintain their family have been provided, as well as a premium that is given to the producers so that they can invest that money into social projects, like building schools or providing clean water. Therefore if consumers decide to buy fair trade products ,companies will continue to take care of these matters and other companies will start as well.
In conclusion, next time you eat chocolate, take into consideration all the steps that took to get in your hands and how easily you could change the workers’ lives and their families’, by simply buying a fair trade product.