FairTrade chocolate is hot in Holland. With the holiday season in sight, development aid organisation Oxfam Novib is pushing to get rid of ‘unfair’ chocolate from supermarket shelves. And with success: in the past two weeks several retailers have committed themselves to start selling FairTrade chocolate from next year. But what difference does it really make to cocoa farmers in West Africa?

For Ghanaian cocoa farmer James Adiyiah, who has been in the business since 1986, the benefits of joining FairTrade cocoa cooperative Kuapa Kokoo are clear. “Before, buyers used to cheat me. If I brought a 64 kg bag of cocoa, they would only pay me for about 54 kg, because the scales had been tempered with. When FairTrade came, I could afford to send my children to school. There’s no more cheating.”

FairTrade lobby
Development aid organisations like Oxfam Novib are convinced FairTrade is the way forward. It ensures a reasonable income for farmers and promotes sustainable and ethical practices on the cocoa plantations. Gone are the low earnings, child labour, uncontrolled use of pesticides, deforestation and infertile soil.

On 5 December, the traditional Dutch Sinterklaas holiday, people give each other chocolate letters, normally the first letter of someone’s name. This year, anticipating the usual increase in chocolate consumption in the Netherlands during Sinterklaas and, to a lesser extent, Christmas, Oxfam Novib mobilised over 77,500 people to lobby online for FairTrade chocolate. The ultimate aim is to improve the lives of the estimated 10.5 million who work on cocoa plantations in West Africa.

Shops that sell mostly non-FairTrade chocolate, were listed on the internet under a picture of a spray-painted shop front. An army of ethical consumer activists went into shops to count how many non-FairTrade chocolate letters were on sale. They lobbied store managers to start selling FairTrade chocolate.

Profits gobbled up
There’s a reason why the Netherlands was picked for their offensive. With a 14-percent share of the global market, the country is the world’s biggest chocolate importer and processor. Cocoa accounts for more than half of all foodstuffs imported into the Netherlands from Africa, and the trade is worth a staggering 2.2 billion euros a year.

But, warns Oxfam Novib director Adrie Papma, cocoa farmers don’t see much of that money. “Intermediaries take most of the revenue. Supermarkets make profits of up to 50 percent on chocolate, but the average cocoa farmer only receives three cents for every euro that’s paid in the shops.”

FairTrade should put an end to all this. But of course the label itself won't solve everything that’s wrong in the cocoa industry. The EU has slapped a hefty 43-percent import tariff on chocolate to discourage farmers and companies from exporting processed cocoa. Until that changes, FairTrade cocoa may be the best option many farmers have.