DUBBLE FAIRTRADE CHOCOLATE - chunk 1 story of cocoa farmers and Comic Relief

Choose Your Background

The People - in Ghana grow the cocoa beans for Dubble & Divine choc, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Trees - produce cocoa pods with white gooey cocoa beans inside, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Pods - are rugby ball shaped and are usually yellow when ripe, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Beans - are scooped out of the pods, fermented and dried, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Trade - farmers are guaranteed a fair price for our choc, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Factory - turns cocoa beans into yummy Dubble and Divine choc, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

The Shop - where you have the power to make a difference, check out the 'BEAN 2 BAR' section

Choc 'n' Change - change the chocolate industry - check out the choc 'n' change section

CHUNK 1 - TOUGH TIMES

Being a cocoa farmer isn’t as sweet as it sounds. There is no chocolate without cocoa, and although millions of chocolate bars are sold every day, cocoa farmers are some of the poorest people in the world and on average earn less than 50p per day Think about something you spent 50p on recently. A chocolate bar, a comic or a fizzy drink? In Ghana, 50p goes much further than it does in the UK because farmers will often grow their own food and there is less demand for consumer goods. Despite that, the average farming family finds it really hard to pay for vital things like medicines, clothes, and work tools..

Most cocoa farmers There are over 14 million cocoa farmers worldwide. are not in a strong position to demand a higher price for their cocoa because they depend on selling their cocoa beans to pay for the essential things in life.

THE ESSENTIALS

Cocoa farmers need money to pay for essential things like medicines, school fees to send children to school and farm tools like Wellington boots to protect them from the snakes and scorpions that live among the cocoa trees!

Big chocolate companies try to maximise profit for their shareholders Shareholders are the owners of a business. They have a say in how a business is run, and earn money if the business makes profit. by keeping their production costs low. Because they buy literally mountains of cocoa beans, big chocolate companies having buying power There are a few big chocolate companies who buy most of the world’s cocoa. This means they can negotiate a lower price and they can also stockpile cocoa beans when the price of cocoa is low.; this means they can drive down the cost of buying the cocoa beans from the farmers.

Life is unpredictable for a farmer because the price for cocoa goes up and down The world market price of cocoa changes every day. It is affected by loads of things: the buying power of big chocolate companies, a sophisticated global internet trading business called the ‘Futures Industry’ and even the weather! When the weather is good for producing cocoa, the price of cocoa will fall because there is so much of it being produced!. If you get pocket money, imagine if the amount changed each week… it would mean you couldn’t plan for what you needed to buy.

Next Chunk

CHEATED

To make things worse, cocoa farmers are sometimes cheated when they sell their cocoa to non-Fairtrade buyers, who fix the weighing scales to show a lower reading than the actual weight of their cocoa beans.