Thrillers and Suspense
The 2008/09 Ivorian cocoa season began five days late due to the reform efforts that are to weed out the corruption in the cocoa sector. The management committee that now runs the key cocoa sector institutions opened the season on Sunday and also set a new indicative farm gate price of CFA700 ($1.48) per kilogram for the next quarter, up from CFA500/kg during the past quarters.
Continue reading “Côte d’Ivoire Increases Cocoa Farm Gate Price”
New research published in the journal PLoS One (Public Library of Science), reveals that there is far more genetic diversity in cocoa trees than hitherto assumed. Anyone interested in cocoa and chocolate has know for a long time that there are three varieties: criollo, forastero and trinitario.
The names date back to the early days of the Spanish conquest. The trees growing in Mexico, particularly Soconusco, and Central America were thought to produce the highest quality of beans and were called criollo or “native.” The beans from the Amazon area were considered to be of inferior quality. When they began to show up in Mexico, there were called forastero or “foreigner” to distinguish them from the home grown variety. Later, enterprising farmers in Trinidad hybridized the two varieties and produced the third strain, trinitario. Or so the story goes.
Continue reading “New Research Upsets Old Cocoa Classification”
For the second year in a row, a number of organizations concerned about the fate of children in the cocoa sector around the world are pooling their resources for a reverse trick-or-treat campaign on Halloween. The campaign is indented to educate consumers about the labor conditions in the cocoa sector and the fair trade alternatives available to them.
Continue reading “Reverse Trick-or-Treat Campaign starts again”
Readers of this blog will remember my earlier post on the corruption in the Ivorian cocoa sector. Well documented in Carol Off’s book, the key institutions put in place after the 2000 liberalization of the cocoa sector (the BCC – Bourse du Café et du Cacao, the FDPCC – Fonds de Développement et de Promotion des Activités des Producteurs de Café et de Cacao – and the FRC – Fonds the Régulation et Control) were quickly turned into corrupt institutions that served to enrich a small elite surrounding president Laurent Gbagbo.
Continue reading “Côte d’Ivoire begins Cocoa Sector Cleanup”
My favorite fair trade chocolate, Divine, won big at the 2008 Chicago Luxury Chocolate Salon. According to the event’s website, Divine won the following awards: best milk chocolate, best dark chocolate bar, best fair trade bar and best flavored chocolate bar. That’s great news and will help Divine become a household name in the U.S.
