UPDATED 8/24/2021: Check out an interview with a cocoa farmer in Ghana, below.
UPDATED 7/15/2021: Last week I cross-posted the article below, which originally appeared on cocoa scholar Kristy Leissle’s blog Chocolate Bar None. It outlines a very different opinion than many people’s in the craft chocolate community. So often small communities like ours exist in an echo chamber of agreement. I’m not doing that on this blog. I’m trying to cut through the noise by including multiple viewpoints that may challenge all of us and our ideas and ideals. My goal is always to uplift and empower those who have been marginalized, even if that means questioning ideas that I’ve always taken for granted. I realized after posting that this cross post came out of left field, and that many viewed it as amplifying a privileged point of view. I apologize for any hurt that this has caused.
At the time I asked for your feedback on social and directly through email, and now, at the bottom of this post, I’ve added the responses you sent to me. I hope we can continue to have honest and frank conversations around this topic, and so many others!
(Note: I did not get paid or receive any compensation for this post, or for any writing on Chocolate Noise.)
Why Boycotting Big Chocolate Doesn’t Solve Anything
by Kristy Leissle
A real-life human being — Kweku — who would be punished by boycotting multinationals. Copyright Kristy Leissle
If any emotion motivates me to write Chocolate Bar None, I hope it’s compassion for vulnerable people working in West African cocoa. But in the past few weeks, I have felt more compelled by frustration to write this particular post.
My prompt was the U.S. Supreme Court decision that multinational chocolate manufacturers and processors, including Nestlé and Cargill, could not be held accountable for alleged instances of child slavery along their supply chains.
Some readers may feel surprised that my frustration was not at the verdict. Instead, I have felt quite provoked by the way certain bloggers, tweeters, and self-styled journalists wrote about this verdict. (For a brief account of the Court’s decision, no sensationalism, see this article from ConfectioneryNews.)
I thank my friend Megan Giller at Chocolate Noise for pointing me to some of the more egregious posts. Megan knew I would share her concern about the way some writers depicted West Africa, and their related calls for boycotts.
Allegations of Evil
More than once, I read that if I was interested in furthering trade justice, including reducing child labor, I should punish the multinationals in the failed lawsuit by boycotting them.
I learned too that the people who run chocolate multinationals are evil profit-seekers who don’t care whether children are enslaved to grow cocoa beans. If I dared buy from those brands, then the implication was that I was evil too.
Maybe the people who run Nestlé or Cargill have made decisions that exacerbated suffering among cocoa farmers in West Africa. Maybe they have taken other decisions that have led to healthy outcomes.
Regardless, to reduce them to evil-mongers is immature and uninformed. It’s sensationalist writing, intended to make readers feel that, with no effort apart from hitting a “like” button, they have joined the “right” side.
Accusations of evil don’t teach you anything. You will not come away more informed about context, reality, or the mechanics of the cocoa trade.
Multinational Boycotts: Who Really Suffers?
Let me share a vignette from my fieldwork in Ghana. We’ll see what you think about boycotts after reading it.
Kweku’s father taught him how to farm, and he knew from childhood that he wanted to work with cocoa. Though a talented agriculturalist, he did not own land. So he started by farming other people’s land for a share of the proceeds. In other words, a sharecropper.
In time, Kweku entered into an abunu contract. While abunu does not confer land ownership, it does gives a tenant the right to farm land and retain all the proceeds. Abunu tenants can also pass that farming right to their children. It’s an attractive option, and many people aspire to it.
A life changed, for the better
By middle-age, Kweku was farming multiple plots as both sharecropper and abunu tenant. He had worked hard, prospered, and elevated the socioeconomic status of his large, affectionate family.
A prominent NGO began a project in his community. From their trainings, Kweku improved his cocoa quality. He also learned that what he did on his farm impacted the chocolate made from his beans.
Realizing that he played an important role in the larger chocolate system moved Kweku deeply. He began, of his own accord and without compensation, to teach other farmers how to improve their post-harvest practices.
Would you, a reader who is presumably interested in elevating the situation of farmers, feel good about buying chocolate made from cocoa that Kweku grew?
If the answer is yes, then find some chocolate made with cocoa processed by Cargill. Because that is where his cocoa went. To Cargill. One of the companies named in the Supreme Court case that we are all, according to some, supposed to be boycotting.
Boycott Cargill, and you boycott Kweku. Why don’t you try it? I’m sure Kweku will thank you.
Certifications Tell You NOTHING About Individuals
Here’s another true story.
Kwadwo was a prominent, respected leader of a Fairtrade-certified cocoa cooperative. His elected position on the community governing board gave him a say in how his village would spend Fairtrade premium money.
Kwadwo also oversaw labor rights among community members. This included ensuring safe working conditions for both children and adults.
Because he sold to a cooperative that had Fairtrade and other certifications, his cocoa ended up in premium brands. Some of them are widely promoted as “safe,” from an ethical perspective. Free, somehow, of “evil.”
I had the opportunity to meet with Kwadwo in a research setting. After the focus group, I distributed refreshments, as I always do during fieldwork in rural communities. I opened the trunk of my car to take out some drinks. As I turned around, I saw Kwadwo give a woman a violent push, towards me.
His intention was clear: she was collecting drinks on his behalf, and he wanted her to be first to receive them. He wanted his drinks right away, or the most drinks, or whatever. He felt that he could use physical force on a woman to achieve this.
The woman seemed both angry and defeated by the shove. I sensed that similar incidents had happened before, and probably would again.
Domestic violence is widespread in Ghana. As in many other places, it is not always considered unacceptable. Maybe other members of Kwadwo’s community saw him pushing a woman as “acceptable” behavior. Maybe they didn’t, and were repulsed by it.
I don’t accept it. I would feel ill knowing I had eaten chocolate made with cocoa that a domestic abuser had grown.
Brand Roulette?
My point in sharing these stories is to illustrate that knowing what company made your chocolate bar tells you nothing about the farmers who grew the cocoa.
Both stories are true. The only details I changed were the farmers’ names. But I could easily have shared stories with the opposite circumstances.
It might have been an honest, loving farmer who sold to a Fairtrade-certified cooperative.
Equally, it might have been a farmer who demonstrated a despicable behavior whose cocoa ended up with a multinational.
No matter what sort of person a farmer is, their cocoa might end up anywhere. In any bar, any brand, whether named in child slavery lawsuits, or displaying every certification on offer.
This truth is at the heart of my decision to buy and eat any chocolate. It’s also why I will never fault you for choosing to only buy certified or craft chocolate. To me, the chances seem pretty much even that we are both contributing to honest people’s livelihoods. People — farmers — who need us to continue supporting their hard work.
Boycotts Don’t Help Farmers — They Ignore Them
When writers advocate for boycotts of multinational chocolate makers, they leave out the most important part of the story: human beings.
Real-life women and men who work hard to grow cocoa — most of which ends up with multinational chocolate companies.
When people call for boycotts, they are essentially saying that the only thing that matters is punishing people at “the top” for alleged nefarious behaviors. No one ever seems to think about the people at the bottom who will suffer as a result.
Just because you are mad at Nestlé, that doesn’t give you the right to punish hardworking human beings you have never met and whose circumstance you likely cannot understand.
Based on my experiences in West Africa, many farmers here are grateful that multinationals buy so much of their cocoa. They recognize the problems with the global cocoa trade same as you, and in all likelihood better. Yet no farmer has ever told me that they wished Nestlé or Cargill would stop buying from them.
It’s not enough to tell people to buy certified or craft chocolate as a substitute. It’s not enough. Those markets are minuscule, and quite frankly such companies will never match the buying power of the multinationals. This is not a defeatist statement. It’s a realistic one.
If you really cared about cocoa farmers, why would you turn your back on millions of them in West Africa? Why wouldn’t you find a smarter way to advocate for change?
My own role, as I see it, is to share the truths that I witness, no matter how little people may want to accept those truths.
I’m doing my best at it. I expect the same from you.
Dr. Leissle is the author of Cocoa, a volume in the Polity “Resources” series; co-founder of the Cocoapreneurship Institute of Ghana, which supports entrepreneurs working at any stage of the cocoa value chain in West Africa; and Cultural Specialist for National Geographic-Lindblad Expeditions, in Africa and Western Europe. Previously full-time faculty at the University of Washington Bothell, she pioneered university-level education in chocolate with her class, Chocolate: A Global Inquiry. This was the first undergraduate class dedicated to the study of chocolate in the U.S., and culminated each year with the UWB Chocolate Festival. Dr. Leissle publishes regularly in academic journals, newspapers, and magazines, and contributes to Oxford Analytica Daily Briefs. Dr. Leissle holds degrees from Oxford University, University of Washington, and Boston College. She lives in Accra, Ghana. Read more of her work here.
Community Responses
General Feedback
“Thanks very much for providing Kristy’s essay to we readers of your blog. In recent years I have mainly been buying and consuming craft and “fair trade” (in quotes because I know there’s a lot of greenwashing associated with this designation) chocolate, but I always appreciate hearing both sides of a story.
Boycotts have advantages and disadvantages and I always wonder if some of them are worthwhile because the people who produce the product that is being boycotted are being hurt by possibly losing their livelihood.”
“There’s certainly a lot to pick apart here.
To be honest, I’m pretty uncomfortable with this stance from Kristy Leissle. She of course knows far more about chocolate than I ever will, so my disagreement with her here is not from any position of believing I have more knowledge or understanding.
It’s absolutely true that there are good and bad folks involved with both craft chocolate and big chocolate, and both on the side of growing and processing cacao and on the side of purchasing it. I’m sure there are good people working at Nestle, just as I’m sure there are some jerks running bean to bar outfits. Similarly, as she points out, good and bad people occur at the same rates among the farmers growing cacao for big chocolate and small chocolate as they occur in the rest of society. All that functionally establishes is that people are people.
Zooming in to this degree to say, “See, here’s a good person” or “Here’s a bad person” ignores systemic oppression and the ways in which it benefits from maintaining the status quo. As a straight, white, cisgender male, one thing I’ve had to come to grips with over the last decade+ is that when a problem of systemic injustice exists from which I benefit in some way, I do not have to consciously or actively be “evil” in order to perpetuate that injustice. The slope is already tilted toward that injustice, and all that is required for me to support it is to change nothing and keep quiet. I will benefit from it by simply staying neutral. If I want to push back against that injustice, I have to make active, vocal choices.
We have established by this point that a whole lot of people are getting hurt by the cacao trade, and that that hurt is tied to money—a lot of it in a few hands, and very little of it in a lot of others. Because the system is already set up that way and has run on a colonial engine since before anyone currently involved was even alive, no one currently alive has to consciously be evil in order to perpetuate it. It will just continue running that way until there is active change. That change could come from the top—from those with purchasing power at major corporations—or it could come from consumers enforcing those changes with our own, more limited purchasing power.
Boycotts alone don’t fix problems. Of course that’s true. But Kristy Leissle here provides no alternatives to enact substantive change in the cacao trade. She makes the claim that boycotting big chocolate is a naive approach to combating exploitation in cacao, then provides literally no other avenues for combating that exploitation.
I do not have a strategic plan for how to solve the problems of labor exploitation and child slavery in the cacao trade. But I know maintaining the status quo by doing absolutely nothing cannot be the foundation of such a plan. What’s advocated for here is just continuing on with business as usual, which changes absolutely nothing. If she doesn’t want us to boycott big chocolate, okay, but what Does she want us to do? I don’t want to speak for her, but it almost seems like she’s saying we shouldn’t change anything because “good” people will suffer some consequences if we do. When systemic injustice exists, that position always supports the oppressor.
As always, I have the utmost respect for you, Megan. This was certainly thought-provoking, but I do come down with a markedly different conclusion. I think what Kristy Leissle suggests here perpetuates a known problem and provides no path forward. I would, of course, welcome suggestions from her for such a path.”
“Thank you so much for publishing this. We need more enlightening stories such as these that boldly speak the truth amidst all the noise. I’d love to read more of these.”
Boycotts Are Essential
“An artisanal chocolatier sent me your article and wanted to know my thoughts, this was my reply. Also I am always available to you as well.
When I first started SLC (16 years ago), I didn’t advocate boycotting as I didn’t want to see the farmers abandoned. A short while later, I changed my tune. The intent behind boycotting is a message. It’s a stand that a person makes to their own conscience for one. Are you a I-can’t-do-anything-about-greed-and-corrupiton so I’ll just throw in the towel and eat M&M’s? Or are you a person that is self committed to acting on a higher level? If we were all the former, we’d still be enjoying the games at the Roman Colosseum.I go back and forth with the academics, a lot on this subject. What you are saying is true. The cacao situation in west Africa is a very complex situation. The collection of ethical chocolate is miniscule in comparison. Some academics get frustrated with the fact that journalists and activists use sensational terms like “boycott” or “Nestlé is evil” instead of taking the time to outline the bigger picture. What they don’t get is the fact that no one in the general public is going to read an 8 paragraph story entitled “The complexity of cacao in west Africa.” And to boot, no editor is going to print an article that they don’t think anyone would read. It’s unfortunate, sure.
As an activist it’s my role to inspire people to act on injustice as that is the only way things will change. In this day and age, we have about 7 seconds to grab someone’s attention. That 7 seconds might turn into 2 minutes if we are lucky.
So is boycotting slave tainted chocolate the remedy? No. But it’s part of it. The alternative is giving up.”
“Thank you for your comments!
Of course, we could also buy Xyklon B poison gas used by Nazis to murder Jews and others in WWII and spray it around our houses because there were some nice people in the supply chain, the so-called “Good Germans.” But it is morally wrong to support something that hurts people and planet. And it is absurd to buy something that can kill us.
Gandhi could have said to the Indians: go ahead and keep buying British salt and textiles that harm people and planet, and submit to their illegal laws and coercion and virtual enslavement of ourselves, because there are some nice people who work for their salt and textile corporations. Instead he said: harming people and planet is morally wrong, we will make our own salt and textiles in harmony with Nature, and the British and their system of human and planetary abuses must go. It would have been absurd for him and his fellow Indians or anyone else to keep supporting something that could kill and was killing them.
Eating chocolate that is toxic for people and planet not only “doesn’t solve anything” either; it feeds the beast. I know nice people who work in the West for Lindt, Nestle, etc. But I do not buy or eat their chocolate, because no matter how nice these people are, the chocolate and its supply chain still hurts people and planet. It would be absurd to buy something that could kill me.
Happily, humanity is at an extraordinary turning point: more people than ever are shedding the slave self that says you have to submit to someone else and to work for and buy into a system that we know is wrong and that hurts people and planet. We can build and are building a Golden Age that nourishes and supports people and planet, a Golden Age of empathy and equality, courage and compassion, liberty and love!
With chocolate as a central and delicious part of that! : )”
Boycotts Aren’t a Good Solution
“It is very true.
As long as children go to school, it is OK to work with their parents in the field. there is the need of a generational transition and if kinds dont learn about the cacao, there wont be new farmers. it s a very complex situation…”
“Awesome! Love this!!
Thank you for sharing and posting…”
“Thank you so much for sharing this post. It really resonates with me. I work for Puratos in their sustainable cocoa sourcing based in Vietnam, and with experience living in West Africa (Peace Corps). I am a big fan of craft chocolate and also of course the chocolate from the company I work for (Puratos). I understand first hand that things are not black and white, and big companies can also be catalysts for positive change. Great to see this piece which illustrates very well the complexities and realities.
Thank you again for sharing.”
“I had already thought about this issue mentioned in your newsletter and I agree that boycotting isn’t the answer for such difficult problem. I believe that spreading the word about it is a way of making people conscious and interested in discussing it to find ways to manage it. Big companies move slowly and have always been focused on money. It will take time to do it in a different manner, but I believe young people are more connected to social and environmental issues, one day some of them will get to the highest positions on those companies and I hope they have a new and fair approach. For now, what we can do is bring the topic to the attention of everyone, specially the new generations (millennials and others).”
The Solution Is Outside the Current System
“Support tree to bar chocolatiers!! Their product is better and healthier.”
“Boycotting Big Chocolate would solve things, eventually, but at great cost to all involved. It is in effect the nuclear option. It would devastate, but from the ashes a better system could grow, though more likely new names would become the Big Chocolate.
The answer I believe and hope is in Direct Trade, it works somewhat in the world of coffee and could also in the world of Cacao. But the current direct trade routes still end up being dominated by “bigger” players.
With modern technology, it will soon be possible for even a remote farmer in Africa or South America, to connect. We need to start planning, developing ways to connect those farmers, directly to the small artisan producers and even to the public.
Personally I would like to see consumers being prepared to pay a small premium, and for those small premiums to be sent directly to the associated farmers. But I was told that that could not work.”
“I really appreciate your latest eblast/ article by Kristy Leissle on child labor and the inefficacy of boycotting big multi-nationals. For my partner Frederic and me, the answer to this problem is somewhat simplistic but exceptionally hard: create a viable alternative. Right now there isn’t one, and without a viable affordable alternative at scale, you can’t really win the battle against the race to the bottom, where all the atrocities occur.
Frederic was born in Cameroon and I have been a social justice entrepreneur for a bit (too long.) A few years ago we set out to build a parallel infrastructure, if you will, to allow quality beans to be produced and shipped from the heart of industrialized cocoa production. It’s a question of logistics for us, and logistics is not easy in these areas. Zoto.be helped us with fermentation boxes, drying protocols and whatnot and we’ve successfully produced quality cocoa from Cameroon, but not quite at scale as of yet. We did ship a full container last year and we’ll ship another container this year. And in 2022, we will see what kind of market we can find…”
UPDATE 8/24/2021
The day after she published her post, Kristy Leissle interviewed Kwabena Assan Mends. Mends is the founder of EMFED Farms, as well as a 2019 Acumen Fellow and agricultural science teacher. He shared with her why he doesn’t think boycotting Big Chocolate is a good idea, and why Westerners have a misconception about child slavery in Africa.
