This Week in Green – Nov. 12, 2010
Cocoa crisis may leave bitter taste for chocolate lovers
Deforestation and unsustainable land use often seem like faraway and distant topics, at once hard to digest and rarely manifested in our day-to-day lives.
That may change soon, and not in a big “sky-is-falling” way, but in a way that hits a little closer to everyone’s home.
Chocolate may become scarce and extremely expensive. The international market has seen the price of cocoa — the raw ingredient for chocolate — soar. The root of the cocoa shortage can be traced to unfair trade policies as well as deforestation and poor land use.
While West Africa leads the world in cocoa production, its cocoa farmers don’t share much in the profits. While that problem could be solved by sharing more of the revenue with the farmers, the land use issue isn’t as easy to solve.
In their natural environment in the rainforests of the Americas, cocoa trees can live up to 100 years. But in the rush to raise cocoa trees as a cash crop, farmers have cleared the forests and planted the trees in open fields, where the trees live less than 30 years.
That leads to a cycle that can’t be sustained. As the land loses fertility, the trees die sooner and farmers look to raze more forests. If that cycle isn’t broken, the shortage of chocolate will be felt across the world.
Here are just a few fair trade sites that support chocolate/cocoa:
Global Exchange’s Fair Trade Cocoa Campaign
The Equal Exchange Co-op
Stop Chocolate Slavery
Fair Trade USA’s Cocoa Program
The New American Dream Marketplace