Cocoa Farming in Africa
ghana's largest export yields environmentally rich returns
2008-04-22
What with Mother Earth going to hell in a handbasket, the current push to go green is understandable. But the heavy lifting comes, not in swearing off the plastic or switching out our lightbulbs, but in convincing our neighbors and ourselves to make permanent, sustainable changes that will, in the long run, have a lasting quality-of-life impact. Such sustainable changes come in the form of self-sufficiency, a concept easier to embrace in theory than it is to actualize.
In an effort to turn sustainable causes into cash, many Third World countries have adopted burgeoning small business models, operations that require minimal start-up capital but might, ultimately, guarantee high-yield results for residents of an area, sorely in need of resources. One of the earliest models for this is Ghana’s Kuapa Kokoo cocoa farmers cooperative and Divine Chocolates, the world’s first farmer-owned chocolate company.
Launch the cocoa diary
Ghana is the world’s second largest exporter of cocoa, most of it grown on four or five acre family farms. Going it alone proved to be difficult most times as the yield of crops could fluctuate or the price of cocoa drop enough to keep the farmers precariously close to ruin. Additionally, for years, all the farmers had been individually selling their cocoa beans to the country’s sole exporter, the Cocoa Marketing Company.
In the early 90’s a number of farmers saw an opportunity to have a say in the industry so thoroughly intertwined with their success or failure. These farmers pooled their resources and set up the Kuapa Kokoo – “good cocoa growers” –cooperative to buy beans from the farmers and subsequently sell them to Cocoa Marketing. Their mission was to provide the farmers with a voice, a dignified livelihood, the increased participation of women and the environmentally friendly cultivation of the country’s number one crop. Kuapa Kokoo developed a reputation for honesty and fair business practices, particularly its commitment to Fair Trade tenets which meant greater returns to its members.
In 1997, the group decided to go one level deeper into the production chain and launch a chocolate company. With initial investments from The Body Shop, Comic Aid and others, Divine Chocolate was formed. In 2000, the Body Shop donated its shares of Divine to the farmers’ cooperative, skyrocketing the group of cocoa pod growers to the heights of commerce as their share of the company mushroomed to 45 percent. Its numbers now grown to 45,000 members, Divine moved, in 2006 to crack the $13 billion U.S. market, launching its Fair Trade wares in Washington, D.C.
Women have benefited greatly from these initiatives as they have used their Kuapa Kokoo proceeds for such projects as building schools, sinking wells for clean water, providing mobile medical clinics and making available micro-loans to women of the area for off-season business ventures.
Farmers Celia Donquah and Cecilia Afuena toured the U.S. in the Fall of 2007 to tell the Divine story.