Chocolate in Modern Times: Globalization of Production
Picture source: https://www.raconteur.net/corporate-social-responsibility/child-labour-cocoa-production/
With the Industrial Revolution came another increase in demand in cacao production. Now that cacao could be turned into chocolate at a cheaper and faster rate, cacao went from being an item that was only produced in the Americas to being produced in every part around the equator where it could grow, twenty degrees above and below the equator. This increased demand in cacao not only led to cacao spreading to other parts of the world, but it also led to the need for more people to do the hard labor of cacao production.
Cacao is a plant that can only be grown in a certain area, twenty degrees below and above the equator. With Latin American countries becoming independent, slavery being abolished, and cacao regions getting attacked with disease, European countries had to find a new area to produce more cacao as Latin American, with so many problems, couldn’t keep up with the new demand. Europe decided to set their focus on Africa as it was the perfect area to grow cacao and no European power at the time had a lot of control in Africa. This set off a race to colonize Africa.
Cacao first came to the African continent through Sao Tome, an island country located on the equator in the Gulf of Guinea, by way of Brazil. It was when cacao was brought to Africa that European powers realized the potential cacao had in Africa. This led to the passing of the Berlin Act in 1885, a treaty drawn up to divide Africa among different European powers. Europeans used all kinds of means to increase production of cacao as the demand for it grew. This led to new forms of slavery. When people found out about these new forms of enslaved labor, companies such as Cadbury committed to getting their cacao from other places where enslavement wasn’t used. But this didn’t solve the problem of enslaved labor being used as farmers eventually turned to children for labor.
The need for more people to grow cacao led to kids getting pulled into cacao production, as cacao was grown mostly on small farms. In order for these small farms to survive, they needed to use the cheap labor they could find and that ended up being kids. Kids as young as five years old were doing jobs that were already hard enough and dangerous for an adult to do. They were also paid less money due to being minors. These kids could be family members of the cacao farm owners, or kids that were trafficked to the farm, or kids that were even sold by their parents into enslavement. These kids are working with machetes and carry well over a hundred pounds of cacao over the course of 100 hours in a week. The need for these kids to work affected their education because it became more important to work on the farm than to go to school.
Many companies claim that they didn’t know that the cacao they were purchasing was grown using child labor. In 2001, pressure from the United States congress and threat of boycott in the United States and United Kingdom put pressure on chocolate companies to ensure that child labor wasn’t be used. The original plan to combat the use of child labor by the United States congress was a legislative amendment by Eliot Engel, Representative of New York, to have label chocolate as “no child slavery” and Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa wanted an additional label that stated “slave free.” This plan changed, however, when the amendment didn’t pass and congress made an agreement with chocolate companies to eliminate child labor in the production of cacao, known as the Harking-Engel Protocol. However, this goal seems to become more and more unlikely to be reached. In 2001, these companies promised the elimination by 2005 and this deadline continuously had been pushed back again and again to its most current deadline of 2020 which with the covid pandemic was likely not meant and will probably have to be pushed back again.
The Industrial Revolution created an increase in demand for cacao due to machines making it easier to turn cacao into chocolate at a cheaper and faster rate. But it was this increase in production that led to cacao spreading to Africa, which caused Africa to become colonized and the need for more people to work on cacao plantations eventually lead to people being enslaved to work cacao farms but when that became a problem farmers turn to kids for enslaved labor on cacao plantations so that they could continue to make a living. With the use of child labor in the production of chocolate, how did chocolate companies convince people eat chocolate?
Bibliography:
Lecture 6
Off, Carol. Bitter Chocolate. The New Press, 2006.
Robertson, Emma. Chocolate, Women and Empire: A Social and Cultural History. Manchester Press, 2009.
