It is time for fair chocolate!

Everyone loves chocolate – especially in winter! But the cultivation of the main ingredient, COCOA, is characterized by poverty, dependence and inequality. Fairtrade farmers benefit from a stable minimum price, a bonus for community projects, training in sustainable farming methods, and the strengthening of women's and children's rights.

Why is the cultivation of cocoa often so difficult? 

Cocoa cultivation is characterised by smallholder farming: around 90 percent of the world's cocoa comes from family farms, which often cultivate small fields of less than five hectares. The imbalance of power in the supply chain is great, with a few cocoa processing companies dominating the market and dictating prices. The income of cocoa farming families is often only sufficient for basic needs; investments in education, the future of children or sustainable cultivation are usually not possible. The consequences of climate change are clearly noticeable, cocoa plant diseases are occurring more frequently and harvest volumes are falling. If cocoa cultivation is to continue, there is an urgent need to switch to sustainable cultivation methods.

How does Fairtrade improve the living conditions of local people?

 
Fairtrade provides stability and more planning security. On the one hand, farmers join together to form cooperatives. This strengthens them because they work together. Fairtrade gives them stable prices. This allows them to plan better. And there is an additional premium, the Fairtrade premium. The cooperatives invest this money in projects such as schools, healthcare or even young cocoa trees in order to secure the harvest in the long term. Another challenge is exploitative child labour, which is prohibited in the Fairtrade standards. Fairtrade sensitises cocoa cooperatives to this issue and has set up a fund to finance projects to strengthen children's rights.

Fair facts and numbers (as at 2022)

• Over 470,000 cocoa farmers grow Fairtrade cocoa. 70% of them in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
• Around 40 cocoa beans are needed to produce 1 kilogramme of chocolate.
• The market share of Fairtrade cocoa in the German chocolate industry is 17%.

How can you advocate for more fairness?

This starts with the decision on the chocolate shelf. Nikolaus, for example, are also available with Fairtrade cocoa. This also applies to baking - chocolate icing and baking cocoa are also Fairtrade certified. When fairtrade chocolate is given as a sweet surprise, it's not just your loved ones who are happy, but also the producers.

As a Fairtrade University, H-BRS is actively committed to fair trading conditions worldwide. For example, Fairtrade products are sold in the catering outlets on the Rheinbach and Sankt Augustin campuses.