Trading Visions -

The Return of ‘Choc Finger’

Tom Allen — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 14:14:21 +0100

There was lots of excitement in the media over the last week, with cocoa prices briefly hitting a 33-year high after a single buyer cornered the market, purchasing and taking delivery of 240,100 tonnes of cocoa.

That’s £658 million worth of cocoa beans, representing around 7% of the world’s annual production of cocoa, or 15% of current global stocks.

The buyer is a hedge fund called Armajaro Holdings, headed up by multi-millionaire Anthony Ward. The fact that Mr Ward has actually taken delivery of the beans suggests that he is stockpiling them, betting on future cocoa shortages with the hope of selling them on for a whopping profit.

The World Cup: our most progressive global institution?

Tom Allen — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:53:30 +0100

The World Cup isn't just popular in England. Football fever is at crazy levels all over Ghana at the moment too.

The Ghanaian Black Stars are currently at the top of what was considered a pretty tough group, having won four points from two matches with Serbia and Australia. They play against Germany tonight and a draw would be enough to see them through to the finals.

While a win for the Germans looks more likely in Johannesburg tonight, the Black Stars have grown in confidence and are undefeated so far. It’s certainly going to be an interesting match.

Football is undoubtedly the world’s most popular game, loved by millions, if not billions, of people, irrespective of race, gender, religion or class. It is also the world’s most globalised sport.

Take Ghana’s Black Stars for example. Their coach is a 55-year-old Serbian, Milovan Rajevac, who has been praised for his consistent hard work in building up the team. There’s Stephen Appiah, the Ghanaian midfielder who plays for Bologna; John Mensah, who plays as a defender for Lyon; and regular captain, talismanic midfielder Michael Essien who plays for Chelsea, sadly injured and unable to take part in the World Cup.

Football is also a rare example of globalisation that works, that is, globalisation that doesn’t just advance the interests of rich and powerful nations at the expense of poor nations.

The big issue: children and chocolate

Tom Allen — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:13:59 +0000

The run up to Easter, when the British prepare to chomp their way through 80m Easter eggs, is the traditional time of year for guilt fuelled exposés of the continuing problem of child labour in the cocoa industry.

A recently aired Panorama documentary sees a renewed media focus on the issue in the UK, one of many since harrowing stories of West African child slaves first came to global public attention ten years ago.

That original media and public outcry paved the way for the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary code of self-regulation that has defined chocolate industry efforts to tackle the worse forms of child labour in the supply chain over the past nine years.

Children and chocolate have long been associated; it is because chocolate is such a potent symbol of the innocent joys of childhood that revelations about children being trafficked or forced to undertake hazardous and excessive work on cocoa farms are so incendiary.

For this blog post, Trading Visions reflects on some of these issues, with contributions from four authors exploring the intersection of childhood and chocolate.

What has big chocolate been doing about child labour in the cocoa industry?
by Michael Niemann

Child labour and cocoa: whose voices prevail?
by Amanda Berlan

Chocolate and childhood in the North
by Catherine Phipps

Report from a child labour workshop in Ghana
by Tom Allen

Panorama documentary on chocolate

Tom Allen — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 09:28:07 +0000

A BBC Panorama documentary filmed in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire was aired last night that highlighted the continuing problem of child labour in the cocoa industry, ten years after the issue was brought to global media attention with harrowing stories of West African child slaves in 2000 and 2001.

It has been nine years since international public concern led to the signing of the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary code of self-regulation created by the chocolate industry to prevent the worst forms of child labour in the supply chain. The protocol was originally created to stave off proposed US legislation that would have required all chocolate sold in America to state on the label that it is “child slave labour free”. Unfortunately, little progress has been made.

The focus in the Panorama documentary on incidences of child labour among farmers supplying cocoa to two Fairtrade cooperatives in Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire reminds us that the Fairtrade Mark does not guarantee “no child labour”, it guarantees a fair price to farmers and a Fairtrade premium to farmers' organisations. However Fairtrade does clearly emerge in the documentary as the only credible system that can trace cocoa back to individual farms and thus take remedial action when breaches of standards on child labour are identified.

The Kraft-Cadbury takeover

Tom Allen — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 16:28:55 +0000

Last week, Cadbury and Kraft agreed terms for an £11.6bn takeover. It ended a long, drawn out and very public campaign by Cadbury to preserve its independence.

Cadbury's unions have led the opposition to the takeover, warning that thousands of jobs will be put at risk. Kraft now has a considerable amount of debt and a record of aggressive cost-cutting. The Unite union put together an opposition document for Cadbury's shareholders.

Kraft has stated that it expects "to honour Cadbury's commitments to sustainable and ethical sourcing, including Fairtrade" but it looks unlikely that Kraft would continue to expand its use of Fairtrade cocoa beans into brands beyond Dairy Milk.

The deal has re-shaped the global chocolate industry, which is now dominated by just four large companies: Kraft/Cadbury, Mars, Nestle and Ferrero. This excellent interactive graphic at the Guardian website shows at a glance the new companies and their product range.

Nestle is now in the unsual position of being third place, behind the Mars and the new Kraft/Cadbury giant, an unfamiliar role for the world's largest food corporation. It might not remain that way for too long as it is eyeing up Hershey, an American company with an iconic status similar to Cadbury in the UK.

Is Fairtrade selling itself too cheap?

Tom Allen — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:36:28 +0000

Last week saw years of patient courtship pay off for the Fairtrade Foundation, as it secured Fairtrade status for the nation’s favourite “chocolate biscuit bar”, Kit Kat. The cocoa will come from co-operatives in Côte d’Ivoire, and the sugar from farmers in Belize.

Appropriately enough, the news broke on the same day as cocoa prices reached one of their recent peaks: $3,378 per tonne on the New York futures market, the highest level since 1985. Prices are said to have been boosted by speculation about dwindling supplies from Côte d’Ivoire.

The news has been greeted with a good deal of unease among campaigners and activists. Though Kit Kat was originally launched in 1935 by Rowntree and is something of a British institution, Rowntree was of course taken over by Nestlé in 1988, just as Cadbury is looking likely to be swallowed up before too long. And Nestlé has the dubious distinction of being one of the world’s most notoriously unethical companies.

Smallholder farming is the future

Tom Allen — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:47:30 +0000

There was a disappointing three-day UN World Food Summit in Rome earlier this week. Given that around a billion people are malnourished and suffering the effects of high global food prices, the summit could have been a great opportunity for rich countries to pull together and make real commitments to eradicate world hunger.

Instead, Silvio Berlusconi was the only G8 country leader who even bothered to attend the summit. The director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, Jacques Diouf, made headlines when he expressed disappointment at the outcome of the summit, and criticised rich countries for managing to mobilise trillions of dollars to combat the financial crisis while neglecting to tackle food security.

It is disappointing because in July this year G8 leaders pledged to put £12bn into boosting sustainable agriculture in poor countries, and now that money is failing to materialise. Agricultural development aid seems to be falling by the wayside once more.

Yet, small-scale, sustainable agriculture is the future. Investing in smallholder farming will not only support the two billion people who depend directly upon it, it is our best chance of feeding the rest of us in the long term.

Fairtrade supporters conference

Tom Allen — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 19:02:02 +0100

It was the Fairtrade Supporters Conference in London today, one of the best Fairtrade Foundation conferences I've attended.

I would have liked to have seen more reflection about the future of Fairtrade campaigning in the UK. This sort of conference could be the space for genuine consultation and strategic debate about the direction of the Fairtrade movement. As it is, they are always rather top-down in approach and tend to take the campaigners for granted, treating them as a resource to be deployed rather than as co-creators in a shared endeavour.

Nevertheless, the conference still did a great job making us feel part of a campaigning community, stoking up enthusiasm and sharing useful information. It was good to hear about DFID's £12m of new investment in Fairtrade, aiming to bring another million producers into the system. Harriet Lamb described how costly and time consuming it can be to bring new producers or commodities into the system, using the example of Zaytoun olive oil from Palestine which took over five years to certify Fairtrade. For all the success of Fairtrade, it still requires substantial external investments to scale up and deepen its impact.

The final panel discussion of the day - "what role does fairness play in sustainable consumption" - was particularly interesting.

Starbucks: the marketing of ethics

Tom Allen — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 15:30:27 +0100

Starbucks recently switched the majority of its coffee to Fairtrade in the UK and Ireland. After years of over-marketing their fair trade credentials in their stores and on their marketing and educational materials, the reality is catching up with the rhetoric.

Mind you, the rhetoric has stepped up another gear too, with a massive multimillion-pound ad campaign launched to squeeze out as much ethical mileage as possible. Like the big budget television ad focused on Fairtrade and Ghana currently being run by Cadbury, the Starbucks campaign marks an interesting point where, in this country at least, Fairtrade has become not so much a burdensome extra cost for companies as a powerful marketing tool.

Cocoa prices rise, shortfalls predicted

Tom Allen — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 10:54:44 +0100

Cocoa prices hit a 24-year high last week, reaching $3,183 per tonne on the New York futures market, now well above the Fairtrade minimum price floor of $1,600 a tonne. Meanwhile the International Cocoa Organisation (ICCO) revised down its forecasted surplus for next year’s harvest from 100,000 tonnes to 25,000-50,000 tonnes.

It seems that demand for cocoa – which took a hit because of the global recession – is picking up again more quickly than expected, even as production is predicted to fall.

Fairtrade Cadbury: Altruism or Self-interest?

Catherine Phipps — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:18:03 +0100

As reported widely over the past few weeks, Fairtrade Dairy Milk chocolate bars are at long last rolling off the production line at Cadbury’s Bournville factory. This is a momentous, if long overdue, event for the fair trade movement, increasing all UK Fairtrade sales by 25% in one swoop and making the Fairtrade Mark visible in many more retail outlets.

The Fairtrade certification of Dairy Milk is a massive piece of ‘choice editing’, in a similar way to when Sainsbury switched all its bananas to Fairtrade. Usually ethical consumers have to make an active choice when buying Fairtrade products. When switching completely to Fairtrade bananas, Sainsbury addressed the fact that most people won’t actively seek out products that address issues such as sustainability and human exploitation, but will buy them when they are their only choice and they are right under their nose. The fact that Cadbury has followed suit by converting the most popular chocolate bar in Britain to Fairtrade, so placing Fairtrade in every newsagent and supermarket in Britain at no extra cost to the consumer, is a welcome development.

The development does also mark a big shift in the balance of power within the fair trade movement, raising all the big questions that arise when multinational companies adopt the Fairtrade Mark. So while it is an excellent thing, we need to be wary and thoughtful about the long term impact, and in particular ensure that the Fairtrade mission is not compromised or weakened in any way.

Visit to Ghana

Tom Allen — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:35:31 +0100

Tom Palmer, a children's author who writes fast paced football novels, went to Ghana recently to do some research for the latest book in his football detective series. He visited a Kuapa Kokoo cocoa farm and one of the schools that we work with, and wrote a lovely blog about his travels for the Dubble website.

It is always fascinating to read first impressions of people's visits to far away places. When you first travel to a new and unfamiliar country, you are like a natural anthropologist, excited by the minutia of everyday life, recording details and impressions that you will later find commonplace and familiar but which contain important insights that are worth holding on to. It is a bit like a dream that will lose its vivid colour unless you record your observations.

Leeds Fairtrade Schools Conference

Tom Allen — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:51:20 +0100

An early start today with a thermos of Oromo coffee to keep us awake for the long drive up to Leeds for the Fairtrade Schools conference. This was in the rather splendid surroundings of the Leeds Business School, a converted Victorian grammar school.

We met up with the mighty DGH, Divine Chocolate's resident chocolatier, who ran an excellent lunchtime cookery workshop at the refectory. He was supported by special guest Carl, from the Ministry of Chocolate. They were two chocolatiers on a mission!

Hopes and Dreams

Tom Allen — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:33:24 +0100

Over at Pa Pa Paa LIVE, the interactive webcast service we run with Comic Relief, we've got a special webcast up to celebrate International Day of the African Child on Tuesday 16th June.

We hope that it highlights the sort of aspirations young people in Africa have for their futures; free from poverty and full of opportunities.

International Day of the African Child has been celebrated on 16th June every year since the end of Apartheid in 1991. It honours the thousands of black schoolchildren who took to the streets during the Soweto Uprising of 1976 to protest about the inferior quality of their education, and draws attention to the lives of African children today.

Farmers of the world unite!

Sara Barron — Mon, 11 May 2009 17:41:19 +0100

We kicked off May 2009 with a City of London May Day event organised by Trading Visions, Justshare and the Fairtrade London Campaign.

It was a perfect sunny afternoon to fly the Fairtrade flag and we made a real statement by setting up our stands in the heart of the City – right at the steps of the Royal Exchange!

Q&A on Mars and Cadbury

Tom Allen — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:52:46 +0100

The last two months have seen two of the biggest chocolate industry players announce major ethical certification initiatives.

Cadbury's Dairy Milk bar will be Fairtrade certified in the UK and Ireland by the end of 2009, with plans to convert more of their range, and Mars are working with Rainforest Alliance to sustainably source all their cocoa by 2020, starting with Rainforest Alliance certification for the Galaxy bar in 2010.

To put these announcements in context and explore their significance, we put some questions to Mars and Cadbury, and to three external commentators...

Divine Chocolate welcomes Cadbury's Dairy Milk announcement

Tom Allen — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 14:08:01 +0100

Short film by Reuters with Divine Chocolate welcoming British confectioner Cadbury's decision to convert its biggest selling chocolate bar, Dairy Milk, to Fairtrade.

Pa Pa Paa LIVE

Tom Allen — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 15:30:58 +0100

Trading Visions and Comic Relief have launched an interesting new service for schools, in collaboration with Kuapa Kokoo and Divine Chocolate, called Pa Pa Paa LIVE. It's an online video broadcasting service, delivering webcasts from a rural junior school in Ghana to classrooms across the UK.

Global survey on Fairtrade

Tom Allen — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 13:36:15 +0100

Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO), the global Fairtrade certification umbrella body, has commissioned the first ever global consumer survey on Fairtrade. It was carried out by GlobeScan, and involved a sample size of 14,500 people in fifteen countries.

The results are encouraging reading. The survey shows that ‘active ethical consumers’ make up just over half the population (55%) in the countries surveyed. These consumers are willing to reward or punish companies that meet, or fail to meet, their expectations, and they influence others with their opinions.

Half of the public (50%) in the fifteen countries are now familiar with the Fairtrade mark and of these people, nine out of ten (91%) trust it. The survey also shows that 64% of all consumers in the surveyed countries believe that Fairtrade has strict standards, a quality that FLO says closely correlates to consumer trust. And 72% of all consumers believe independent certification is the best way to verify a product’s ethical claims.

Mars sustainability announcement

Tom Allen — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 13:42:18 +0100

Mars has announced that all its cocoa will be "sustainably sourced" by 2020. Mars is working with the Rainforest Alliance to certify at least some of this cocoa. The first product to bear the Rainforest Alliance mark will be Galaxy Chocolate in the UK and Ireland, beginning in 2010.

Did the G20 Summit Live Up to Expectations?

Tom Allen — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 11:38:50 +0100

I don't know about you, but I was secretly hoping the G20 summit last week would live up to Gordon Brown's hype, surprise us all and radically re-shape the global economic system.

Put People First

Tom Allen — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:49:45 +0000

Next week, Gordon Brown is hosting a high profile G20 summit. The ambitious objective of the twenty-two world leaders gathering in London is to tackle the global economic crisis. Expectations are high, but few people have faith that politicians will deliver unless they are pushed to take radical progressive action.

Who Owns Fairtrade?

Tom Allen — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 11:34:46 +0000

Trading Visions, in collaboration with the LSE Centre for Civil Society, held a well attended public discussion debate on Tuesday 24th February 2009. The topic was 'Who Owns Fairtrade?'

Some of the themes explored included:
• the contradictions of fair trade being a consumer brand as well as a movement;
• the fact that ownership can be claimed by such a wide range of stakeholders, from Fairtrade schools to Sainsbury;
• the contrast between the rigours of certification for small scale producers and the ease of involvement for large corporations;
• the ideal and reality of the fair trade partnership along the value chain.

You can watch and listen to the panellists and the discussion below.

Dairy Milk Goes Fairtrade

Tom Allen — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:07:49 +0000

Cadbury and the Fairtrade Foundation have announced that Cadbury's Dairy Milk chocolate bar, and its hot chocolate beverage, will become Fairtrade certified in the UK and Ireland by the autumn of 2009.

Dairy Milk is the UK's best selling bar, with 300 million of them being produced every year. The chief executive of the company, Todd Stitzer, says he plans to convert their other chocolate brands to Fairtrade "as soon as we can do it". Dairy Milk represents 20% of Cadbury's chocolate range.

Small farmers, big solutions

Tom Allen — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:39:28 +0000

Fairtrade Foundation hosted a conference today on the global food crisis, accompanied by a succinct and timely report researched by Mark Curtis.

Tens of millions of people are now suffering the effects of increased and volatile food and fuel prices, including the world's 450 million smallholder farming households, home to around two billion people. Average food prices rose 83 per cent between 2005 and 2008

Fairtrade sales continue to rise

Tom Allen — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 10:18:40 +0000

The Fairtrade Foundation announced today that Fairtrade sales rose 43 percent over 2007, defying the economic downturn and reaching an estimated retail value of £700m in 2008. The number of families regularly buying ethical tea, coffee, fruit and clothes in 2008 rose by 1.3 million to 18 million.