At Corporate Accountability Lab, we love chocolate as much as anyone, but this Halloween, we’re haunted by the harrowing stories cocoa farmers told our attorneys during field visits across Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana last month.
More than half of the world’s cocoa is sourced from these two West African countries. While multinational brands rely on Ghanaian and Ivorian farmers to produce the key ingredient to the multibillion dollar chocolate industry, companies pay unsustainably low prices for cocoa, entrenching farmers in cycles of poverty and subsidizing the industry.
CAL’s work in West Africa targets these unjust prices and the knock-on effects on human rights and the environment. We investigate forced child labor, eco-social certifications, interactions between multinational companies and the government, and the structure of the cocoa supply chain so that we can hold companies accountable for their role in exploiting farmers. While we’ve written reports on Ghana’s cocoa governance and the impact of COVID on cocoa farmers from afar during the pandemic, last month we were finally able to get back to cocoa-growing communities and speak with farmers.
Unfortunately, what we heard on the ground confirms that conditions for West African cocoa farmers have not improved over the last two and a half years. In fact, in some cases, the situation is becoming even more dire. In addition to the crises created by the poverty prices cocoa companies pay, farmers are face a rampant tree virus (“swollen shoot”) that is devastating cocoa yields. The low prices farmers are paid for their labor leave them with few options to combat this disease, or other challenges inherent to cocoa farming.
As we’ve written in the past, Halloween is a stark reminder of how much is wrong with both our international food systems and our legal frameworks regulating--and failing to regulate--corporate behavior, particularly when it comes to cocoa.
Haunted by stories of exploitation
Last month, CAL Staff Attorneys Reynolds Taylor and Allie Brudney visited visited nine cocoa-farming villages in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, where they spoke with tribal leaders and community members about the challenges they face as cocoa farmers. They heard about companies’ failure to pay the government mandated Living Income Differential (LID), as well as the consensus — across two countries, nine villages, and among hundreds of farmers — that a fair price for cocoa is at least triple the current price.
Some stories in particular stand out: one village’s entire harvest — thousands of dollars’ worth of cocoa beans — being stolen; twelve-year-old children going to work on cocoa farms full time; company representatives adjusting bean-weighing scales so that farmers are credited for less production than they are owed; devastating tree diseases wreaking havoc on cocoa farms, decreasing yields by as much as 60 percent; companies refusing to pay the premiums they promised to farmers; families without food or access to any sort of medical care; and communities without schools and teachers.
Photo taken in Ahokwa (a village in Ghana), where the CAL team was told that cocoa farming causes such severe stress that the farmers “die young.”*
Photo taken in Bobokro (a village in Cote d’Ivoire), where farmers told CAL they pay for most or all of their farming inputs (including fertilizer and machinery necessary for harvesting) themselves. Despite the hefty cost of these items, they were paid as little as $0.75 per kilogram of cocoa beans in 2021.
Photo taken in a village near Sefwi-Wiawso, Ghana, where community members told CAL “most of the youth do not go to school,” opting instead to help their parents on the farm.
Photo taken in Anglo (a village in Ghana), where farmers described the hazards inherent in cocoa farming — made all the more dangerous because the nearest clinic is more than three miles away.
Photo taken in Memhasem (a village in Ghana). Cocoa beans are taken from cocoa pods, and then dried and fermented on large planks (like the one pictured here) for weeks. Despite the harshness of their lives, the farmers CAL met were proud of their harvest and carried themselves with incredible dignity.
Photo taken in Keitadougou (a village in Cote d’Ivoire). This is the main road out of the village — used by farmers to take their beans to market. When roads become unusable, children cannot walk to school and farmers struggle to sell cocoa beans.
Photo taken in Koda Tchad (a village in Cote d’Ivoire), where — when asked — the adults in the meeting told CAL that not one of them had attended school. They pointed away from the tent where we sat, saying that one person in the village may have gone to school.
The stories we heard on our recent field visits remain with us on Halloween and as we continue to work toward corporate accountability in the cocoa sector. Ghanaian and Ivorian cocoa farmers are indispensable to the global chocolate industry. It’s time Big Chocolate treats cocoa farmers with the dignity they deserve, by responding to their demands and paying a higher price for cocoa.
To celebrate Halloween, please consider making a donation to support CAL’s work.
*CAL never shares photos of our community partners without informed consent. All individuals pictured here asked for their photos and stories to be shared publicly.
