Everyone Wins With Fair Trade
by
John J. Dunphy
(Originally published in The Telegraph of Alton, IL)
Like many of you, I regard chocolate as one of the major food groups along with fruit and veggies. I just wonder, however, how many of my fellow chocolate aficionados are aware that the cocoa beans used to make the products they so enjoy might well have been harvested by children as young as six. Too outlandish to be true? I just wish that indeed were the case.
Americans purchase about 3 billion pounds of chocolate per year. Unfortunately for the cocoa farmers of West Africa, the source of 70 percent of the world’s cocoa, that kind of demand doesn’t necessarily translate into a hefty profit margin. According to the article, “Is There Child Labor in Your Chocolate?,” these cocoa farmers earn between twenty-five to fifty cents per day “and are stuck in deep cycles of poverty.”
The children of these farmers endure the kind of life that we Americans can barely imagine. According to Fair Trade USA, “More than 2 million children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana are being deprived of their childhoods, either working in extremely hazardous conditions or working in lieu of going to school, so that we can get our chocolate fix.” And the situation is steadily growing worse. Fair Trade cites a study conducted by Tulane University that found “the number of children involved in hazardous work in cocoa increased by 46% in the Ivory Coast between 2009 and 2014.”
Before we self-righteously condemn these parents for compelling their children to engage in such grueling, dangerous work, we need to consider some basic facts. Low cocoa yields and low prices for cocoa mean that these parents are poverty-stricken. They can’t afford to hire adult laborers, Fair Trade USA points out, “thus leaving them with no choice but to use their children as labor.” While these children are indeed forced to work when they should be in school, cocoa farming isn’t the only factor that deprives them of an education. Fair Trade USA reminds us that West Africa suffers from a serious shortage of schools and teachers. Even if these children weren’t forced to work out of sheer economic necessity, their parents “can’t afford necessary school-related expenses such as tuition, uniforms, and books.”
The Fair Trade movement is working to change this tragic scenario. Fair Trade activists seek to empower cocoa farmers and other workers in developing nations by seeing that they receive the kind of money they deserve for their products. Fair Trade promotes safe working environments and the use of sustainable agricultural methods. When farmers in developing nations receive a just price for their products, the Fair Trade USA web site notes, it becomes feasible for them to “transition to organic agriculture,” which is ”safer for farm workers, healthier for consumers and better for the environment.” In other words, both humanity and our planet win when Fair Trade is successfully implemented.
Fair Trade is by no means limited to the production of cocoa. Many products exported from developing nations now bear the Fair Trade label, such as coffee. Child labor is all too common in coffee cultivation. According to “Bitter Brew: The Stirring Reality of Coffee,” up to 40 percent of coffee harvest workers in Honduras are children. One study found that coffee farmers often earn less than $2 per day.
The populations of developing nations have been ruthlessly exploited for centuries by colonization and, after winning independence, by multinational corporations and predatory indigenous elites. Fair Trade is all about ending exploitation. It’s about making certain that farmers and workers receive the money they deserve for their time and labor. Consider switching to products that are designated as Fair Trade to help support this movement. I think you’ll find that chocolate and coffee are especially delicious when flavored with justice.
John J. Dunphy is a writer and poet. His books include Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois and Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials.