Thrillers and Suspense
The Toledo Cocoa Growers Association (TCGA) maintains three buying depots. One at its headquarters in Punta Gorda, one in San Antonio and one in Mayamopan. Each depot received beans that have been fermented and dried. The TCGA specs are straightforward–box fermentation for six days with bean turn-over every two days and then sun drying until the beans reach the proper residual moisture, generally six days as well.
I’m finally back from a wonderful visit to the Toledo Cocoa Growers Association (TCGA) in Punta Gorda, Belize. The name may not say much to most chocolate lovers, but it this cooperative that provides the beans for Green & Black’s Maya Gold chocolate bar. It was one of the earliest cooperatives certified for fairtrade cocoa.
The TCGA has developed into a viable organization, despite its troubles beginnings in the mid-1980s. It was founded in response to the Hershey-Hummingbird project, an attempt to restart cocoa production in Belize. When cocoa prices collapsed in the early 1990s, Hershey abandonned the project and left the farmers holding the bag.
Bloomberg News reported today that Ghana’s COCOBOD will seek a $1.2 billion loan to finance the cocoa purchase for the next season. That amount represents a 20% increase over the amount secured for the current season. Clearly, the COCOBOD is optimistic that Ghanian farmers will reach their production goal for the 2009/2010 season. During the current season, the board has bought 530,000 tons, about 120,000 tons less than planned for.
Continue reading “Ghana to Borrow $1.2 billion for Next Season’s Crop”
With much fanfare, many news outlets announced the decision by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to donate $23 million to the World Cocoa Foundation. The usual supporters of the WCF have pledged to chip in a similar amount in the form of cash and in-kind contributions bringing the total up to $40 million. That’s a lot of money and more than has been spent on cocoa in West Africa by the industry since the Harkin-Engel protocol was signed in 2001.
Continue reading “The Gates Foundation Discovers Cocoa Farmers”
The International Labor Rights Fund began a new letter writing campaign to protest the use of child labor in the cocoa sector. The letters ask the CEOs of Hershey, Mars and Nestlé about their concrete efforts to limit the use of child labor on cocoa farms in West Africa. The campaign aims to end the aura of secrecy and the lack of accountability surrounding the manner in which the Harkin-Engel Protocol has been implemented. Go to the website and send a letter yourself.
And just in time for Valentine’s Day, the ILRF produced a new scorecard to help you understand your choices when it comes to buying chocolate. The scorecard rates companies as either bitter, semi-sweet and sweet depending on their record regarding labor issues. There are few surprises. As I pointed out, buying fair-trade chocolate is the surest way to ensure that child labor was not used during the production of cocoa. But the semi-sweet group shows that it is possible for conventional companies to do some things right.
