When I visited cocoa farmers in Côte d’Ivoire a few months ago, I met a community that is hopeful. Hopeful despite the predicted crisis in the cocoa industry and warnings of future chocolate shortages because farmers trapped in poverty struggle to survive let alone invest in producing more cocoa to meet rising demand. It is a country which has been ravaged by civil war, where 80% live on less than 40p a day, and where ageing cocoa farms were neglected during the fighting. So are we about to say goodbye to chocolate? Well while that’s what the experts say, this community of 3,000 or so farmers don’t think so and that’s largely thanks to Fairtrade.
While recognising the challenges facing farmers in developing countries all over the world, our new 2016-2020 strategy is also full of hope. Cocoa, among four other core commodities, is a key focus for us and we have recently appointed a new global cocoa director to drive our West Africa Cocoa Programme (pdf) forward. But we’re not doing this just because we love the sweet stuff. For us, it’s about the people behind these commodities; we aim to empower farmers to help themselves. And we aren’t stopping at farmers. People like Marie and Sabine, women I met at the various co-operatives I visited in Côte d’Ivoire, at the Enterprise Co-operative Kimbe (ECOOKIM), are farmers who have risen above the constraints of their gender to gain respect, responsibility and influence in their community.
On the way out to the fields we took a detour to a village where I met Marie. Marie’s husband is a Fairtrade farmer in the CANN co-op, and the added security had enabled Marie to set up a 17 strong women’s collective in her village, growing crops such as maize and cassava in order to raise funds to pay for school uniforms and be able to send their children to school, built with contributions from Fairtrade premium. Their collective’s name means “for their children”. As we spoke I learnt it was early days (they had started planting in March 2015) but they were about to harvest the cassava and were waiting for a good price for the maize.
Over time their goal was to find a field nearer the village they could use to grow – at present their field was 10km away, a sizeable walk and one with few opportunities to expand. Marie’s husband, who according to his shirt was a Derby County fan, took us to the field, though we chose to drive in 4X4s instead of the authentic 10km walk . Even then, the sheer scale of the task they had undertaken became clear, as did the dedication and drive of the people involved.
Sabine is the manager of a Co-op at COPADEG, and trained as an accountant. COPADEG has been a member of ECOOKIM since 2006 and Fairtrade certified since 2007, and has 705 members. She was responsible for the finances and spoke eloquently and knowledgeably about the organisation, its performance and its future plans. I was struck by the respect she commanded within the group and to hear about the plans, not just for the business, but for the community; for the new school that was about to start being built and another school that opened last month.
So to do more for these people, this Responsible Business Week, I want to invite businesses across the grocery sector to work with us. Our new strategy outlines a more flexible approach than ever before. As I recently told a group of more than 50 business leaders, we are going beyond certification and labelling to provide businesses with more choice and ways of sourcing on Fairtrade terms. Last year, for example Mars Chocolate UK became the first company to commit to Fairtrade’s new Cocoa Sourcing Program. This means that the total Fairtrade premiums paid by Mars globally to cocoa cooperatives in west Africa will reach over $2m (£1.4m) per year, which alongside commitments from international companies globally, offers new market opportunities and a significant increase in Fairtrade cocoa farmers’ sales.
And that will in turn continue to empower the communities that benefit from Fairtrade. When I visited the Mars factory, I was blown away by the professionalism, by the size and by the good stuff they were doing, but I was also struck by the fact that the whole of this industry relies upon individuals like Marie and her husband who have to trek from their village to a jungle clearing to hack cocoa pods from the trees with a machete. These are not the professional farms I’ve seen in other Fairtrade tea, coffee or sugar growing communities. That is why we are doing so much to help these communities and why co-operatives receive $200 (£140) per metric tonne of cocoa beans in Premium on top of the sales price of their cocoa. This generated more than €7m (£5.5m) for Fairtrade co-operatives across west Africa in one year, to invest in planting trees, agricultural training and other ways to improve quality and productivity. ECOOKIM has also secured loans and additional funding for resources to improve cocoa processing and harvesting, which has ensured that members are now able to deliver the quality of cocoa required by international markets.
These are ultimately investments in communities, in individual entrepreneurs, in the next generation. So I’ll leave you with the wise words of Aminata Bamba, the co-operative’s head of sustainability: “We tell the members, if you send your children to school, they can come back to the farm when they have finished their education and help you increase the revenue on your farm through better planning and business management.”
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