9781422281208

A Bitter Harvest While large-scale corporations reap increasingly big profits from cheap labor and low-cost raw materials, rock-bottom prices in the cocoa industry keep small-scale producers trapped in poverty. They have little bargaining power to negotiate a decent wage. Their livelihoods depend on the ups and downs of a volatile market. The majority of cocoa farmers in West Africa live in In 2001, after a BBC documentary brought the issue of child slavery on cocoa farms into the international spotlight, the United States adopted the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary agreement in which large chocolate com- panies pledged to eradicate child labor from the chocolate industry. The tar- get date for meeting their goal has repeatedly been extended. From an initial deadline of 2005, it was moved to 2008, 2010, and, now, finally, 2020. In the meantime, little has changed in the industry. Slaves to Chocolate M any of us have a sweet spot for chocolate, but there is a dark side to our favorite treat. Cocoa is a highly labor-intensive crop. Yet low incomes often mean that farmers cannot afford to hire extra laborers to help harvest their crops. The result is an industry plagued by the widespread use of child labor. An estimated 2 million children in West Africa work on cocoa farms, often engaged in dangerous tasks such as operating machinery, lifting heavy loads, and spraying pesticides without protective garments. Many are under twelve years old. Many are deprived of schooling. Most of these child laborers are working alongside their families. A siz- able number of children, however, are slaves, smuggled from neighboring countries and pressed into forced labor on cocoa farms for little or no pay. Tens of thousands of children, some as young as eight, have been sold into slavery by human traffickers in West Africa.

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Global Inequalities and the Fair Trade Movement