Cocoa Loco

It’s that time of year for a box of chocolates for your loved one, breaking that indefinitely long ‘good’ spell post-xmas where we all tentatively weigh the cost of our excesses! It is a bad time to also take a little look at the environmental costs of our choices too and chocolate is one of those little luxuries that it’s easy to overlook when it comes to its environmental and ethical costs.

Sadly, chocolate does have a dark side. Cocoa as a crop is a bit of a one off, it’s a wonderfully special tree that thrives in the humid conditions of its original forests in Latin America. Here it thrives under the canopy of larger trees where it grows a strange knobbly fruit that we may be familiar with. I remember the first time I tried some of the cocoa seed fruit, cracking open the yellow-red outer shell to reveal a white creamy flesh that is sweet and very acidic not at all chocolatey in taste. There’s not much of this but what there is delicious. Then within the flesh are large seeds that, once open give a fresh cocoa bean.

These seeds are left to dry and ferment in the sun, usually out of front of small scale growers houses, before being collected and sent for roasting and extracting. From here the supply chain becomes more convoluted, large processors hoover up these cocoa beans where they are processed into both powder and butter. Some small scale artisanal chocolatiers will by-pass this and get beans direct to their factories and create a delicious ‘liquor’ from the beans but by and large the mass market bars we all eat are processed in several very large manufacturing facilities in Belgium before becoming your sugary milk chocolate you munch in front of the telly.

This complex supply chain can lead to issues. We are becoming more familiar with the issues of both slavery and child labour, Tony Chocolonely (that’s lonely not loney that I mistakenly called it for years) have publicised the issues here. Removing slavery with such large and complex supply chains is difficult but Fairtrade sources pledge that they will create transparent supply chains to remedy this, paying fair wages that also mean farmer families can afford to live without their children having to join them in the fields.

In addition to the human issues; cocoa also has an issue with deforestation and quite surprisingly can have a carbon footprint as high as some forms of cattle farming if not grown correctly. Ironically the answer to this is in its origins as a tree growing in the shade of others. Now called agroforestry, Indigenous farmers have grown cocoa using this method for thousands of years, and modern farmers are finding it effective as well. It helps sequester carbon and supports biodiversity, while also improving the health of cocoa trees. When grown in large monocultures, these trees are more susceptible to fungal infections, which in 2024 caused cocoa prices to increase significantly as yields dropped by up to 50%.

So what can we do about it? Well, as with our Cåke fragrance, you can source biodiversity boosting agroforestry grown cacao that is certified Fairtrade. By finding quality grown sources of cocoa you can enjoy you sweet treat safe in the knowledge that you have supported better farming and a better planet – the ultimate luxury.