Square deal: Fair trade chocolate for fundraisers

from the Belleville News Democrat

By JOAN OBRA
The Fresno Bee

For many folks, chocolate is a guilty pleasure. But for eighth-graders at Mountain Home Charter School in Oakhurst, Calif., a chocolate fundraiser inspired only guilt.

That's because about 70 percent of the world's cocoa - taken from the cacao tree to make chocolate - comes from West Africa, where reports of abusive child labor have circulated for years.

Alarmed by the evidence, eighth-grader Masha Bluestein hoped to change Mountain Home's fundraiser for a class trip to Catalina Island. So she and her mother, Cordia Bluestein, pitched an idea to the other parents: Instead of selling any old chocolate, let's choose chocolate that's certified fair trade.

The certification, they explained, indicates products made without abusive child labor, such as work that prevents children from attending school, uses hazardous farming practices or includes child slavery.

"I really didn't expect people to be particularly receptive," Cordia Bluestein says. "But everyone agreed. They said, `If it's wrong, it's wrong.'"

Now, instead of $1.50 candy bars, the students are selling $3 bars of milk chocolate, bittersweet chocolate and peppermint crunch from Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates, a certified fair-trade company in San Luis Obispo, Calif.

There wasn't necessarily a problem with the previous candy, says Joan Madaus, Mountain Home's eighth-grade coordinator.

But the students wanted a guarantee that none of the candy was made with abusive child labor, and Sweet Earth was able to provide what they needed.

"I think it's wrong to have children in slavery to pay for our field trip when we can use fair trade for the same reason," Masha Bluestein says.

Eliminating abusive child labor isn't as simple as buying fair-trade products. The problem has deep economic and political roots. And the proposed solutions are just as complicated.

Cost-cutting measure

To understand the rise of child labor, consider the example of Ivory Coast in West Africa.

According to a 2006 report from Fafo, a Norwegian foundation that studies issues such as trafficking and child labor, Ivory Coast tripled its cocoa output between 1955 and 1970 by welcoming migrant workers and expanding the country's farms.

To cut costs, these farms used child labor - a tool that was seen as "even more necessary as world cocoa prices plummeted in the late 1980s and early 1990s," the report said.

There were other reasons to slash costs. Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny supported his government with "rents extracted from the cocoa economy," states the report, titled "Child Labour and Cocoa Production in West Africa."

After Boigny died in 1993, political instability worsened. From 2002 to 2004, the country was entangled in civil war. In the cocoa-producing areas, natives and migrants bitterly fought over farmland.

By this time, news reports had alerted the world to child labor problems in Ivory Coast and Ghana.

In 2001, U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., and Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, created the Harkin-Engel Protocol, which pushes to have those countries eliminate abusive child labor practices. When the countries didn't meet the 2005 deadline, the protocol was extended until July 1, 2008.

It's considered unlikely that abusive labor will be significantly diminished by the deadline. Tulane University, which was hired by the Department of Labor to monitor the efforts, says the countries have created pilot programs to monitor child labor, but have yet to quantify the problem.

"Neither (Ivory Coast) or Ghana has yet completed a national survey that accurately describes the nature and scale of the worst forms of child labor in the cocoa sector," Tulane's October 2007 report states.

Given these conditions, what can a socially conscious shopper do?

The answers: Buy chocolate that's free of abusive child labor practices. And support companies that fight poverty and economic decline - two factors responsible for abusive child labor in West Africa.

This is easier said than done, however. A look at chocolate on the shelves of Whole Foods Market shows some confusing choices.

Vintage Plantations products have been certified by the Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit group that supports sustainable agriculture. Alter Eco's products are certified fair trade by TransFair USA. Endangered Species Chocolate calls its products "100 percent ethically traded." The labels also state that "10 percent of net profits (are) donated to help support species, habitat and humanity."

And then there are Trader Joe's Swiss milk and Swiss dark chocolates that bear the Equitable Trade logo.

According to its Web site, www.equitabletrade.org, the association incorporates "a more comprehensive, more meaningful and more transparent set of social, business, environmental and ethically responsible principles and standards into business and trade practices."

The array of choices forces consumers to study different companies and organizations, then decide which ones they trust the most.

One of the most well-known organizations is TransFair USA. Spokesman Anthony Marek explains how it works: Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International in Bonn, Germany, is the umbrella organization for more than 20 fair-trade certifiers. It audits participating farmers in developing countries to verify the absence of abusive child labor and the reinvestment of revenue in projects such as health-care programs, scholarships and microloans to businesses.

In the United States, TransFair USA audits companies to ensure they're paying at least the fair-trade price to these farmers. (Fair-trade agreements set a higher minimum price than the market.)

"The average Fresnan can't really fly down to Central or South America and buy cacao directly from a farmer," Marek says. "Fair-trade certified is the next best thing."

He urges shoppers to choose chocolate with the "fair-trade certified" logo, which depicts a person holding a bowl in each hand. Such products contain 100 percent fair-trade certified products, he says.

Marek also advises shoppers to be wary of labels that include the words "fair trade" but not the logo.

"In some cases, people are hopping on the fair-trade bandwagon. They're using marketing slogans," Marek says. "In some cases, they are doing good things, but there's no independent third-party certification."

Different approach

Companies such as Endangered Species of Indianapolis, say that lack of certification isn't necessarily bad. In "a very difficult decision," the company stopped using TransFair USA, Endangered Species spokeswoman Renee Sweany says. "We certainly see the value in certification."

In this case, Endangered Species wanted to devote more resources to the Nigerian farmers who produce cocoa for the company, Sweany says. Instead of paying for the use of the Fair Trade logo - and part of TransFair's overhead - Endangered Species funds projects such as water pumps and school supplies in the farmers' villages, she says.

The company also sponsors part of a medical mission conducted by the Indianapolis-based Mercy Foundation. Sweany and a colleague will work about 10 days in early June in a Nigerian hospital. Sweany will blog about the experience on the company's Web site, chocolatebar.com.

This year, Endangered Species also is buying cacao from Ivory Coast farming cooperatives. The Ivory Coast farmers are trained on topics such as child labor and environmentally sound production, Sweany says.

She admits that it has taken time - and some missteps - to determine the partnerships that would most benefit the farmers and their communities. Working with the established networks of TransFair USA and Fairtrade Labelling would have been easier in some ways.

But "we like having an impact on the ground and witnessing it firsthand," Sweany says. She likens the process to giving a gift instead of a gift card for Christmas - though both approaches are valuable.

"We're all trying to do what we think is right," she says.

Another model

Sweet Earth chose both routes. In addition to certifying the company through TransFair USA, Sweet Earth founder Tom Neuhaus also created Project Hope and Fairness, a nonprofit, volunteer organization that helps "African cocoa farmers who suffer disproportionately from the inequities in the world cocoa trade," states its Web site, projecthopeandfairness.org.

Project Hope has built classrooms and donated machetes, boots, scales for weighing cocoa, educational materials, school fees and freezers to cocoa farmers.

The organization's Web site explains why freezers are important: "Everywhere you drive in West Africa, people - women and children - come up to the car or van selling products.

"The reason for this is that in order for women to run their families, feed the children and send them to school, they need money. The cash provided by the husband's coffee or cocoa farm is highly seasonal, and once it has run out, that's it. To earn extra money, women and children sell things: hard-boiled eggs, smoked fish, roasted plantains, roasted peanuts, cassava fritters (delicious!), and frozen juices and water."

Project Hope even leads yearly tours for individuals who want to help distribute goods. The cost is almost $5,000 per volunteer.

Neuhaus offers this reason for his dual approach to helping cocoa farmers: "I sincerely believe in fair trade and believe in promoting independence and economic parity and justice. But there are different ways of getting there. The way for us to get there is not to sit in judgment and actually meet people."

That's why Neuhaus supports the efforts of the World Cocoa Foundation, whose members include large chocolate companies that aren't known for fair-trade practices.

Some of the foundation's projects include increasing crop yields, reducing pesticide use, and boosting cocoa quality - all improvements that can increase farmers' incomes.

"The number one thing is ... to help the people become more competitive and more efficient," Neuhaus says. "That way they can lift themselves out of the situation they're in."