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Cocoa beans are valuable, but little of them resonate with many
Photo: Meybol Estendorfer-Moran
Actually, Meybol Estendorfer-Moran would be walking through the rainforest in Peru at this time of year and looking at her cocoa trees.
She would meet the farmers who sell her the cocoa for her chocolate.
Estendorfer-Moran has been producing them since 2018. She sources the cocoa from nine different regions in Peru because each variety tastes different.
She canceled the trip this year due to the pandemic.
Direct contact is important to her: her chocolate should be organic and fairly traded, and she wants to control that herself, she explains.
That's why she even owns a plantation, she negotiates with the farmers and a factory in Lima that produces her chocolate.
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Meybol Estendorfer-Moran knows where their cocoa trees are
Photo: Meybol Estendorfer-Moran
Your product does not have a Fairtrade seal.
You cannot afford to have every cocoa farmer certified, says the entrepreneur.
Because she works with small businesses, some of whom have left larger Fairtrade cooperatives.
However, she wants to pay her suppliers more than the minimum price set by Fairtrade, says Estendorfer-Moran.
For organic cocoa beans, this is currently around 2700 dollars per ton, according to its own information, it pays an average of 5000 dollars per ton.
The cheapest chocolate in your online shop costs just under five euros.
Estendorfer-Moran is not the only one who thinks Fairtrade is not fair enough.
Companies like Original Beans, Fairafric and Lovechock advertise that they buy their cocoa directly from the farmers.
Some of them are available in the supermarket.
But there are also more and more Fairtrade products on the shelves.
The blue-green seal is no longer only available in health food stores; it is now even used to advertise the own brands of large supermarket chains.
"This is a huge stroke of luck for the producers," says Claudia Brück.
She is on the board of Fairtrade Germany, the organization behind the seal.
In 2019, women consumers worldwide spent a little more than two billion euros on it - an increase of 26 percent compared to the previous year.
In order to be competitive, Fairtrade had to lower its standards, says Ndongo Samba Sylla.
The development economist published the book "The Fair Trade Scandal" in 2014 and repeatedly criticizes the system.
Fairtrade sets a minimum price that the producers get.
"The organization is in a dilemma," says Sylla: "If the reserve price is high, nobody will buy the fair cocoa beans. If it is low, the effect for the producers is small."
He criticizes the fact that Fairtrade works with large trading companies that are otherwise not very fair.
"That is exactly our job," says Fairtrade board member Claudia Brück, "to bring fair trade into the mass market."
The same standards apply to supermarket chains as to world shops.
Fairtrade chocolate without fair cocoa
There is criticism, among other things, of the so-called volume compensation for cocoa, sugar and tea.
This regulates that fair trade and conventional goods may be mixed together during production.
In the end, the chocolate with the seal may not contain Fairtrade cocoa.
The organization only ensures that the same amount of fair cocoa has been purchased.
"It has always been done this way, it just wasn't in our standards before 2014," says Brück.
Fairtrade argues that cocoa is practically impossible to trace physically.
Assuming that, many farmers would no longer be able to sell their beans.
Because of this volume balancing, Josef Zotter has not worked with the Fairtrade organization since 2018.
He wanted to show that his chocolate could be traced back directly.
The Austrian company is now a member of the WFTO, the world organization for fair trade.
Its members must act fairly as an entire company; the organization does not certify individual products.
"It cannot be that a company brings out a fair line, but otherwise works conventionally," says Zotter.
The members of the WFTO check each other according to the established standards.
Despite all the criticism: Fairtrade is even better than seals specially designed by companies
Those who cannot be controlled have to build their own credibility.
This works with small productions like Meybol Estendorfer-Moran's. Also because they process a maximum of seven tons of cocoa a year.
At Josef Zotter it is around 250 tons, with an expected worldwide harvest of almost five million tons of cocoa beans, he is also one of the small ones.
Nevertheless, it is not possible for him without certification either.
Because without a seal there are no independent controls, and without independent controls there is no transparency for customers.
Either way, they have to deal with countless different labels: UTZ, Rainforest Alliance, Pro Planet and countless organic seals.
"Fairtrade still has higher standards than most of the other labels," says Ndongo Sylla, despite all the criticism: "If fair trade no longer suits them, then large companies simply design their own label or switch to an organization that has lower standards . "
For economists it is a logical development that more and more companies want to buy their cocoa directly, not on the world market: This gives them better control over their supply chain.
Among other things, Ritter Sport has been building its own cocoa plantation in Nicaragua for a number of years and employs the staff there, while there is also support for independent cooperatives.
The development can help producers sell their cocoa internationally.
But that's not the problem at all, says Sylla.
As long as they only supply the raw materials, the situation of the people in Africa and South America cannot improve.
"For me it's a logic from the colonial days," says Sylla.
Because the added value does not happen during the cocoa harvest, but only during processing.
And most of the companies in Europe or other countries in the global north keep them.
Germany is the world's largest exporter of chocolate.
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Cocoa beans dry in Peru
Photo: Meybol Estendorfer-Moran
Meybol Estendorfer-Moran shows that it can work: She has her cocoa beans roasted, ground and conched in a factory in the Peruvian capital Lima - right through to the finished chocolate.
"It's a political question," says Sylla.
In Germany, Minister of Economic Affairs Peter Altmaier is blocking a supply chain law that would at least make companies responsible for compliance with human rights in their production.
The EU Commission has already announced such a law.
Fairtrade board member Brück and economist Sylla agree that this is only part of the solution.
Because the EU hardly levies any import duties on raw cocoa, but up to almost ten percent on cocoa butter or powder, and the duties are even higher for processed products.
Chocolate manufacturers therefore hardly have any incentive to relocate a larger part of their production to the growing countries.
"As long as this policy is in place, it is of no use that consumers want to pay more for Fairtrade," says Sylla.
Meybol Estendorfer-Moran doesn't want to wait until something changes in the laws or in large companies.
"I have no patience for that," says the entrepreneur.
She not only wants the farmers to be better off, but also the cocoa trees.
Actually, they can be more than 100 years old.
But the farmers usually replace the trees after around 25 years because they no longer bear so much fruit - although their beans would make the best chocolate, according to Estendorfer-Moran: "The old trees are a treasure of gold."
She can save a few of these gold treasures with her chocolate production.
Even if it is too small to really change anything in world trade.
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