Fair Trade Chocolate
How it made me one of the coolest mums in the world… Second to Sophi Trunchell of course! (Sophi runs Divine chocolate, the deliciously Fair Trade chocolate company that works with Ghanaian cocoa farmers).
After organic cotton, organic and Fair Trade chocolate is People Tree Japan’s most successful product and earns me a lot of respect from my kids. Like most kids they LOVE chocolate – especially good chocolate. I’d use it as a treat, a bribe, an apology for being late back from work. In Japan everything comes in small portions and we designed our chocolate bars accordingly.
Living in Japan there would always be a stash of Fair Trade, organic chocolate. I’d melt it and smooth it on top of home made cakes, hang bars from the Christmas tree (well it was more of a potted plant decorated like a Christmas tree because I wasn’t comfortable up-rooting a tree some years), Chocolate left on the children’s breakfast plates to say ‘sorry, back soon’ when I’d go off travelling and lots to take for school friends – Fair Trade organic chocolate became synonymous with a happy, busy everyday family life.
Why I launched Japan’s first Fair Trade and organic chocolate bar?
When I arrived in Japan at the age of 25 –Valentines Day filled me with sadness. I was shocked that Valentines Day was all about women giving men chocolate – unromantically called ‘giri choco’ (obligation chocolate). Office ladies would diligently buy and distribute small chocolate portions to all of the men in their office – these men were generally more senior than them. Who had destroyed Valentines Day? Who had decided chocolate should be ‘used’ like this? Being an idealistic foreigner I decided I wanted to change it, launch a Fair Trade organic chocolate bar, and give unromantic chocolate companies a nudge in the right direction.
I’d read a lot about the struggle of cocoa and sugar farmers in the majority world – how prices where set at such a low level by a few large trading companies, that most farmers lived in absolute poverty despite the big profits their hard work generated for big chocolate brands.
I set about finding partners that could help us makea Fair Trade organic chocolate bar. Altertrade support farmers of sugar (and bananas – but we don’t use bananas in chocolate yet…mmm…that’s an idea!!?) in the Philippines when in the 70s the price of sugar crashed causing mass starvation amongst farmers. ATJ, a leading Fair Trade organisation, and members of the public in Japan organised massive relief and support to farmers. They are now a thriving Fair Trade community and make delicious muscavado sugarbrown and treacly and it’s full of nutrients and good for you too!
We then linked up with El Ceibo in Bolivia, a cocoa farmers co-operative with 38 co-operatives which include 800 famillies, Alto Beni one of the most remote places on earth. Farmers would walk for 5 hours carrying close to their body weight in coca beans on their back, before the cooperative invested in trucks to organise collections from their homesteads. With Fair Trade a good price and resale orders, came access to education for the farmer’s children and a thriving social network to help farmersstrengthen their communities. Today they jointly own a very successful business.
Once you have these two vital ingredients for chocolate, cocoa and sugar, you don’t need much else – but it takes more than just a big mixing bowl to make fine chocolate. Claro, one of the leading Swiss Fair Trade Organisations introduced me to Chocolat Behrain, the most environmentally-friendly chocolate factory in the world. Family run, it has systems that recycle its water, use low energy machinery and is a pioneer in organic and Fair Trade chocolate. It takes 1 month to thoroughly dry the muscovado sugar before it can be used for chocolate– they lay it out on dozens of huge trays in a chapel-sized drying room – nothing seems too much trouble for this team of Fair Trade chocolate visionaries. People Tree’s chocolate is slow chocolate.
Altertrade sugar farmer in the Philippines
El Ceibo – cocoa farmer photo and short caption message about the impact of Fair Trade chocolate
From left to right: Jost Ruegg - Key Account Manager, Chocolate Bernrain, me, AGBear Schumacher - CEO, Claro fair trade AG and Bendicht Witschi - Export Manager, Claro fair trade AG
Looking a right Charlie in the chocolate factory
Plastic bags over high heels too – new fashion inspiration?
The best Fair Trade and organic ingredients make the best chocolate.
Safia shows restraint – Very tempting to stick your finger in the chocolate and lick it.
… but the results are worth it
…delicious Fair Trade organic chocolate. I think I might change jobs...
Yoshi, People Tree Imports and Food Coordinator looks cute in the factory uniform.
The Politics of Chocolate
Last year People Tree teamed up with Chocolate Revolution in Japan to raise awareness of the unfair deal to cocoa farmers. This year; thanks to a lot of media coverage People Tree has been able to get new stockists to make Fair Trade, Organic chocolate much more available around Japan. Chocolate companies are starting to sit up and take notice of our disgust at forced child labour in cocoa plantations in West Africa; Also, the use of banned pesticides on cocoa plantations in the developing world effects the health of farmers and aren’t that good for us to eat either. People Tree surveyed chocolate companies ten years ago and we were largely fobbed off with “of course we don’t know where our cocoa and sugar is bought, we just buy it from a trader”. Thankfully the new movements in transparency and CSR will make saying that a thing of the past.
Growing up with chocolate
Being half Swiss, I love chocolate. My grandmother would let us eat it for breakfast every morning, bread in one hand and chocolate in the other. On birthdays as a child we played the chocolate game (whoever throws 2 sixes on a dice gets to eat chocolate, slowed down by a knife and fork); I play it today with my kids.
When I was 20 I ran a Valentine gorilla-grams Company part time during my lunch break and evenings that delivered chocolate and wine all over London – whilst working for a magazine full time. Chocolate has always been associated with fun and a daily luxury. So today, it is great to hear children pestering their parents in supermarkets and natural food stores for Fair Trade chocolate and writing essays and raps in praise of Fair Trade chocolate. I also received a wonderful book written by Naomi Poole on Fair Trade chocolate – there is a growing army of Fair Trade chocolate activists. Including a lot of mums too who want to put their chocolate habit to good use and spread the word for Fair Trade and organic chocolate.
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