Green Group discussion
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Chocolate seems to be heading for hard times
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"Chocolate and cocoa companies in Europe have agreed to share their data on cocoa farms with Ghana and Ivory Coast to help improve traceability and reduce deforestation.
The news was announced by the European Cocoa Association (ECA) and the Association of Chocolate, Biscuit and Confectionery Industries of Europe (CAOBISCO) at the eighth ECA Forum in Rome on Thursday. Swiss members include heavyweights in the industry like Nestlé and Barry Callebaut, as well as the association of Swiss chocolate and biscuit manufacturers Chocosuisse-Biscosuisse.
To meet sustainability commitments, European chocolate companies have invested heavily in tracing where their main raw material comes from to ensure forests are not being cleared to grow cocoa. However, so far, each company worked on its own to develop its own sustainable cocoa supply chain and the traceability data was not shared.
ECA and CAOBISCO members have now pledged to share this data with Ivory Coast and Ghana, the world’s top cocoa-producing countries. Members’ individual cocoa-sourcing databases will be combined into an overarching database that will then be shared with the Ivorian and Ghanaian cocoa boards.
“This data collection effort should feed into a combined database that is owned and driven by producing countries, in compliance with EU and national data privacy legislation, with the aim of achieving a robust nationwide traceability system,” said ECA and CAOBISCO in a joint statement."
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business...
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You had me at "good news on chocolate." My better half is very relieved to know that "sustainable chocolate" is achievable!!! ;-)
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"At a red-brick factory in the German port city of Hamburg, cocoa bean shells go in one end, and out the other comes an amazing black powder with the potential to counter climate change.
The substance, dubbed biochar, is produced by heating the cocoa husks in an oxygen-free room to 600 degrees Celsius (1,112 Fahrenheit).
The process locks in greenhouse gases and the final product can be used as a fertilizer, or as an ingredient in the production of "green" concrete.
While the biochar industry is still in its infancy, the technology offers a novel way to remove carbon from the Earth's atmosphere, experts say.
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"Biochar was already used by indigenous populations in the Americas as a fertilizer before being rediscovered in the 20th century by scientists researching extremely fecund soils in the Amazon basin.
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"The production method nonetheless remains difficult to scale up to the level imagined by the IPCC.
"To ensure the system stores more carbon than it produces, everything needs to be done locally, with little or no transport. Otherwise it makes no sense," Houben said."
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"Kaido Kaare, CEO Orkla Eesti AS, which owns the Kalev confectionery brand, said no big changes are expected on the Estonian market in the near future.
Prices have been rising for a long time and will continue at the same pace, Kaare said.
"The shortage of cocoa beans has been going on for three or four years now and prices have also been rising for years. It must be admitted that the increase has been faster in the last year, but no drastic change is expected. It must be acknowledged, however, that higher prices have reduced chocolate consumption," he said.
For example, a 300-gram bar of the popular milk chocolate Anneke currently costs approximately €5, in January it was almost 25 percent cheaper.
Companies are also stockpiling cocoa beans to overcome price hikes, but Kaare sees no reason to panic."
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"For nearly a decade, the RSPB and our partners have been supporting farmers around the Gola forests of Sierra Leone and Liberia to produce forest-friendly cocoa. In celebration of this year’s World Chocolate Day, we are venturing beneath the forest canopy to meet the people and the plants at the heart of this work to support local livelihoods and protect a critically important ecosystem through the power of chocolate.
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"The key ingredient in this recipe is shade. As a shade-tolerant crop, cocoa can grow alongside other taller forest trees in an agroforestry system rather than requiring clear-cutting of the forest for its cultivation. It can therefore offer a key source of income for people living in forested areas. This in turn can help protect the forest as there is less dependence on its timber and other resources for local communities needing to make a living.
These cocoa farms are also important areas for wildlife themselves with research showing that 140 bird species use this habitat, including globally threatened species like the Yellow-casqued Hornbill which depend on large trees and so could not survive in monoculture cocoa farms. "
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"“Child labour has been on our agenda for over 20 years, with the Harkin-Engel Protocol and industry commitments and targets. However, progress has been limited thus far,” says Christian Robin, CEO of the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa.
Beyond chocolate
While the chocolate industry has been under scrutiny for more than two decades, other sectors afflicted by child labour, mainly in agriculture, have failed to grab consumer attention to the same extent. The 2024 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor (TVPRA List), compiled by the US Department of Labor, shows the problem is far more prevalent in other industries including gold, sugarcane, coffee, and tobacco.
“The attention paid to child labour in cocoa is justified but very one-sided,” says Robin. “We need to understand the complexity of the problem and look beyond cocoa or we can’t find the right answers.”"
https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/multinat...
Child labor in the chocolate industry is only one small part of the story. People look at a wall filled with little squares. Each square is part of a situation, but has enough in it to consider it to be a single issue. Each square is connected to other squares on the wall. The fact that each square is a part of a larger problem has no bearing on the issue. Only what is in the confines of each square is considered when researching an issue. There are many reasons for this.People can only handle so much information so it has to be divided up. Many groups of people each working on separate parts of the same problem at the same time is the ideal solution.
Unfortunately that's not what happens. Only one little square is looked at because that is only what is paid for.
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https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/science/...
"On this tropical island in the Indian Ocean, the Sambirano River is flanked by aromatic Madagascar cacao trees and the small plots of local farmers. Lately, keeping those trees alive – and harvesting the high-end beans they provide to Swiss consumers – has become more and more difficult. A Swiss-led project is working to mitigate the threat climate change poses to the region, keeping a vital supply line open for the Swiss chocolate industry.
“I have cacao trees that dry out and die from the heat. It’s as if they were burnt,” says cacao farmer Hugues as he manoeuvres a picking pole to pluck ripe cacao fruits from the treetops.
The rainy season, which normally runs from November to April, has become shorter and more intense. Madagascar is vulnerable to powerful cyclones, which have become more frequent and powerful. These storms have redrawn the course of the Sambirano River, causing widespread flooding and washing away cocoa plots along the riverbank. The rainfall in February was brutal.
“If it’s not the heat that kills them, it’s the water,” sighs Hugues, pushing deeper into the fields.
Hugues is among thousands of farmers growing cacao in the Sambirano Valley, home to Madagascar’s most fertile cocoa land. The region is a focal point for international projects blending conservation and agriculture. One such effort addressing land degradation and deforestation is the Climate-Resilient Cocoa Landscapes project, implemented by Swiss-based NGO Helvetas with support of the Swiss Platform for Sustainable Cocoa, an eclectic alliance involving the chocolate manufacturers, traders, retailers, NGOs, research institutions and government officials.
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"But the European market is demanding deforestation-free products, with EU regulations requiring deforestation-free certification for cocoa and other commodities from 2026. That requires tracing cacao back to specific plots of land. The Swiss-led project in the region is therefore helping smallholders secure land titles and collect geographic coordinates of the cocoa plots, essential steps in meeting EU demands.
It’s difficult to get everyone on board. “Some see reforestation as a land grab, and part of our role is explaining that these efforts are not to take land away, but to protect it for future generations,” explains Razafinrabe of Helvetas.
But despite the uphill battle, Arona, mayor of the Ambohitrandriana Commune, sees hopeful signs.
“In just one year, our reforestation has reduced sand in the river,” he says. “People are beginning to understand the importance of this work. The Swiss see our drive to protect the environment, and we are motivated by that.”"
While the climate is transitioning, changes will happen sooner rather than later. This situation will last a long time. The areas following sensible agricultural practices will continue to have good land in the near future. Areas that just grow crops with no consideration to how it is done will only get worse growing conditions. Sometimes the people orchestrating the agricultural operations don't live in the country where the crops are grown and simply move on to a new location when the conditions deteriorate.
https://www.rawstory.com/2014/11/choc...