Happy Easter

For those of you celebrating, a very happy Easter to you. If you’re not, at least enjoy the chocolate. But when you do so, think a little bit about where it’s coming from. That’s the Easter message from Tim Costello, head of World Vision Australia, in an op-ed in News Limited papers earlier this week:

It is almost unthinkable to have Easter without Easter eggs. This year we will spend more than $200 million on them.

And as a father of (now grown-up) children, I have witnessed over many years the joy they bring. Yet there are hundreds of thousands of other children who are profoundly effected by Easter eggs and not for the better.

They are the children who work in the cocoa plantations of West Africa – they toil to produce cocoa that goes into the 924,000 tonnes of chocolate Australians eat each year.

It is estimated that in the West African nation of the Ivory Coast alone more than 600,000 children work on cocoa fields.

Research in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together make up 60 per cent of the world’s cocoa, reveal up to 80 per cent of children in the cocoa fields are being exposed to dangerous practices such as unprotected use of chemicals, carrying heavy loads, brush burning and using machetes. About half of these children do not go to school.

There is also evidence of children being trafficked. The study estimated up to 12,000 children had been trafficked for cocoa in West Africa.

The Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) and Ghana are the two largest cocoa producers in the world, with no developed country making it into the top 10. Without adequate institutional development, the abuse of children is an all too common reality. This is only compounded by the attractiveness of cocoa production. Like most agricultural food commodities, cocoa has surged in value over recent years, hitting a 28-year high of US$2,811 per tonne in New York this February. At the start of 2002, prices were just under $1,400 per tonne. Yet this rise in commodity prices has not translated into an improvement in production techniques. Leading chocolate producer Cadbury Schweppes has found that crop yields in Ghana, where they source most of their cocoa from, are just 40% of what they could be. They have committed to an intensive US$87 million programme of investment and education in West Africa to improve farming practices over the next decade.

Higher prices have not generally translated into improved standards of living for farmers. Sadly, corruption and violence has had a detrimental impact in the Côte d’Ivoire, which has restricted output. A crippling drought in West Africa last year helped propel cocoa prices to their current heights, yet with most farmers unable to grow anything, they’ve not captured any of the benefits. On this basis, the Cadbury initiative is a smart investment. Not only does it help West African farmers, it is also commercially advantageous to Cadbury, who expect to stabilise prices by ensuring a more consistent level of supply from the world’s largest cocoa producers. Already, with weather conditions looking better in 2008, analysts expect increased production to ease supply shortages, resulting in lower prices.