Chocolate not so yummy for environment

Booming industry touts high ethics as it strips more land.

A visit to the chocolate aisle of any grocery store can yield a bewildering array of certification logos, each seeking to assure buyers that the cocoa used to make it was produced according to some measure of sustainability.

Labels from groups like the Rainforest Alliance pledge the cocoa inside “was produced by farmers, foresters, and/or companies working together to create a world where people and nature thrive in harmony.” Fair Trade Certified says items bearing its label are made using methods that support social, economic and environmental sustainability. Many chocolate brands have their own sustainability logos: Mondelez’s “Cocoa Life” represents the chocolate was “made the right way — protecting the planet and respecting the human rights of people in our value chain.” Nestle’s “Cocoa Plan” echoes that sentiment.

Around one-third of cocoa products carry some guarantee of estimable provenance. But that leaves a lot of room for what suppliers and human rights advocates contend is a broader reality — that a lot of cocoa production is far from sustainable. Marked by child labor, deforestation and allegations of green-washing, the industry has arrived at a critical juncture.

At the beginning of the supply chain, all is not well. More than two-thirds of the global supply comes from West Africa, and the prices paid to farmers are often rock bottom. Just 6% of the price of a chocolate bar ends up in their hands, according to the Fairtrade Foundation. Some 90% of farmers in Ivory Coast and 70% in Ghana fall below the International Labor Organization’s poverty threshold of $2.14 per day.

Last year, Ivory Coast and Ghana increased the price they pay to farmers for their crop at the start of the main harvest by 9% and 21% respectively, but the price hikes failed to offset surging inflation.

“The system has always been designed to give consumers the cheapest possible product and make sure that the large global multinationals are making sufficient profit,” said Antonie Fountain, managing director of Voice Network, an organization of NGOs and labor unions focused on cocoa sustainability. “But it’s driving extreme poverty at the beginning of the supply chain.” The World Cocoa Foundation, a global industry lobby, didn’t respond to requests for comment.

This dissonance between cocoa industry claims of sustainability and the economic crises faced by many farmers has had a grave effect for the environment. Cocoa grows in the warm, humid conditions endemic to regions once covered by tropical rainforests. Growers desperate to make enough money to survive have sought to expand their acreage, with disastrous consequences. In Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa producer, about 80% of rainforests have been destroyed — much of it to grow cocoa.

“In desperation, the farmer just goes and grows more cocoa,” said Miguel Orellana, whose company Cacao Criollo Arriba makes chocolate sold in Germany with beans grown in Ecuador. “And the way to do that is destroy more rainforest and plant more cocoa trees.”

Michael Odijie is a research fellow at University College London who has studied Ivory Coast smallholder farms, from which most of the nation’s cocoa originates. He said the way out of the vicious cycle — both for farmers and the environment — is to pay them a living wage.

“Raising income means they can employ more labor to replant instead of moving into the forest,” Odijie said.

Another strategy is to shorten the supply chain. Beyond Good, a company based in New York City, buys direct from farmers in Madagascar and manufactures its chocolate there. While the roughly 12,000 metric tons of cocoa produced annually by Madagascar is negligible in a global market, it means significant income for farmers there.