Eden Project

Where does chocolate come from?

As part of our festival of chocolate, cocoa grower Kouame Alphonse Fasseri from Africa’s Ivory Coast, tells us his part of the story – including how Fairtrade chocolate has made a difference to his daily life.

Kouame is a member of the 6,000-strong Kavokiva Fairtrade co-operative providing cocoa beans that are sent over to the UK to be turned into the final product. He’s his own boss, on a farm with nearly 3,000 trees, working six to seven days a week to produce one tonne of cocoa.

Kouame Alphonse Fasseri, member of Fairtrade cooperative, Kavokiva, who supply the cocoa for Nestle’s Fairtrade Kit Kat, holding a cocoa pod.

‘Growing cocoa is a dedicated process‘
‘It takes three years for a cocoa seedling to reach maturity and start producing a good crop. During that time we look after the young plants, removing dead leaves and making sure there are not weeds around them.

‘We plant other things too, like plantains, to give shade to the cocoa plants and help them grow better. It is also important that they get enough water, so we hope that the rain is good when it comes. Once the plant is mature, it may give a harvest until it is 25 – 30 years old.’

Cocoa pods harvested from the tree

‘My favourite part of the cocoa plant is the leaves‘
‘When there are many leaves, and the leaves look healthy, that means that the cocoa plant will grow well and produce a lot of cocoa beans. When you go to visit another farmer on his farm, the first thing you look at are the leaves on his cocoa plant, and you compliment him if they look good!’

‘The most satisfying part of being a farmer is seeing all the beans ready for export‘
‘When the cocoa pods are ripe, we cut them off the tree with a knife, then crack them open and take out the 40 or so beans inside. We ferment these, then we dry them, before they are taken to be packed and sent for export.’

A Kavokiva co-operative member preparing cocoa beans

‘I’ve eaten chocolate only a few times‘
‘Chocolate is not part of our culture, we don’t tend to buy it. But I have tasted chocolate: first in the Ivory Coast when some Fairtrade visitors brought it, and also during my visit to the UK. The children here eat cocoa beans. It is hard to describe the taste – it is not sweet, like you might imagine.’

‘Fairtrade has made a big difference to me‘
‘With Fairtrade I get a good price. I also receive part of the Fairtrade premium in cash, which is really useful for me to pay school fees and buy food. Before Fairtrade, we had no health centre. Many people were dying of hernias because they did not have enough money to pay for healthcare; farmers were pretending they were not ill and so leaving it too late for treatment.’

‘The co-operative ran an investigation into the cause and we voted to use the Fairtrade premium to build a health clinic. In the last two years, about 200 people have had this operation at the clinic, so many lives have been saved.’

Make a step for Fairtrade while you’re at Eden, for example by buying a Fairtrade chocolate bar in one of our shops on site. Then you can add it to the Fairtrade Foundation’s Step-o-meter; they’re aiming for 1.5 million steps for Fairtrade by the end of the year.

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Categories:

Food, Horticulture

Tags:

Chocolate, Chocolate Jungle, fairtrade, Food, growing, society