Summary of Product
This website is about where your cocoa beans that are the ingredient for chocolate really come from. The majority of the world’s cocoa beans come from Cote d’Ivoire and the beans are harvested with child labour. These children are often injured or infected by the chemicals that they use to harvest the cocoa beans. They don’t know where they end up and they don’t get paid a fair amount of money. However, there are some organisations that are trying to help this global issue, like fair trade or fair labour. Nestle also has a cocoa plan that is helping the child labour in Cote d'Ivoire.
Why is this Product Popular?
This product is popular because the world’s major chocolate companies like Nestle, Hershey’s and Cadbury all get their cocoa beans from Cote d'Ivoire. Chocolate is a very popular food worldwide so this is a global issue. There are other places in the world that supply cocoa beans but this area is the biggest. There are three main cocoa plants: Forastero, Criollo, and Trinitario. The main kind of cocoa plant used today is Forastero that is used in 95% of the world’s cocoa. The higher quality of cocoa bean comes from the Criollo plant but since this plant produces less it is not often used. This type of plant is harvested in Venezuela. Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana are the biggest cocoa producers in the world and they produce more than half of the world cocoa. They produce 1.23 and 0.73 million tonnes per year. This is a graph of where the world’s cocoa beans come from.
Market Share
The Netherlands has the highest amount of cocoa bean imports with 2.1 billion $ worth of cocoa beans. It is one of the main points into Europe. The US has the highest amount of cocoa powder imports with 220 million $ worth of cocoa powder because the US has a large range of cocoa products. The United Kingdom has the largest amount of chocolate products because it is one of the biggest consumption markets with 1.3 billion $ worth of chocolate.
Quotations
These are a couple quotations of what people have to say about child slavery in cocoa farming:
" We must ensure that while eliminating child labour in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public society - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation."
- Carol Bellamy quotes
"Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time."
-Grace Abbott quotes
" We must ensure that while eliminating child labour in the export industry, we are also eliminating their labour from the informal sector, which is more invisible to public society - and thus leaves the children more open to abuse and exploitation."
- Carol Bellamy quotes
"Child labour and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labour of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labour to the end of time."
-Grace Abbott quotes