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Chocolate Purist: An Interview with Sam Madell

Posted by Emily Stone, January 9, 2008 at 2:00 PM

In November, Serious Eats ran my optimistic interview with Seneca Klassen of Bittersweet, who described the cacao-growing industry as "fundamentally organic." It wasn't long before Sam Madell—a spirited bean-to-bar chocolate producer at Tava in Australia—sent us an intricate, itemized response, dismissing Seneca's take on the situation as "blatant misinformation."

"For your information," Sam wrote, "a wide range of pesticides—many of which are banned in Europe because they are unsafe—are used on cocoa trees and beans in many countries, including Ecuador, Venezuela, and Ghana, as well as the USA, where highly toxic methyl bromide is used on cocoa beans in storage."

I thought it would be a good idea to ring in the new year with a new take on organics in the chocolate industry. Herein is the gospel according to Sam.

Why is organic chocolate important to you?

If I had to use just one word to convey why organic chocolate is so important to me, that word would be sustainability.

A system is sustainable when it is capable of being maintained at a steady level without exhausting natural resources or causing severe ecological damage. The least sustainable cocoa plantations are ones that rely on synthetic chemicals—most notably insecticides.

The insecticides used on cocoa have been known to cause infertility in the men who spray them. A man who can't have children obviously can't pass his farm on to the next generation. In the most literal sense, his farming practices are unsustainable.

On a larger scale—when an economy (like Ghana's) is reliant on the export earnings from cocoa, and when their cocoa industry is addicted to oil, that's another profoundly unsustainable situation.

Many people have never pondered the fact that, without the petrochemical industry, synthetic pesticides would not exist. Without oil, those synthetic chemicals can't be manufactured, transported, or applied to crops. All of the available evidence suggests that we have now passed Peak Oil. This means that the world's oil reserves are in decline, so oil will become more and more expensive. Just in the last few days, the price of crude oil hit US$100 a barrel for the first time ever. In the not too distant future, US$100 a barrel is going to look cheap. We know that the first countries to be priced out of the oil market are the poorest countries—and cocoa is grown in many of the world's poorest countries. If (or rather, when) Ghana loses access to oil, and/or the agricultural products that oil makes available, its cocoa industry will be in very serious trouble—assuming that Ghana doesn't convert to organic practices before then.

On the subject of converting to organic practices, people often think that breaking an addiction to agricultural chemicals is easy: you just stop using them, right? Unfortunately, it's not that simple at all.

For example, the types of insecticides traditionally used on cocoa trees cause critical imbalances in local ecosystems. Typically, the predators (including other insects, birds, fish, and reptiles) are hardest hit. When the predators die, the number of pest insects go through the roof. The classic response to this situation is for farmers to attack these pest insects with increasingly toxic chemicals, or with increasingly elaborate chemical cocktails. When farmers who have previously relied on synthetic pesticides try to convert to organic methods, they often suffer catastrophic crop losses because of the imbalance that they have created in the farm's ecosystem. And to compound this financial blow, farmers can't obtain full organic certification (and hence, the premium organic price) until their farm has been totally organic for a number of years (often three years). So, there's an enormous disincentive for cocoa growers to convert to organic - and, for as long as people in the chocolate industry can convince naive consumers that "all cocoa is fundamentally organic", then why on earth would a grower go to the trouble and expense of converting to organic?

Incidentally, most people don't seem to be aware that the best organic standards (like those of the Australian certifier NASAA, for example) are concerned with social justice as well as environmental protection. For example, NASAA requires that their certified operators comply with the UN Charter of Rights for Children, and that employees and their families have access to clean water, education, and health care.

A surprising number of people in the chocolate industry will state—when asked directly—that child labor is acceptable, because it is simply a "reality" within poor economies. However, child labor—and especially the most hazardous forms of child labor, like heavy lifting and working with pesticides—is condemned by the UN, and is actually against the law in every cocoa growing country that I have researched (including Ghana). Child labor only becomes an inevitable "reality" when parents cannot afford not to put their children to work. The higher prices paid for certified organic cocoa help to ensure that children of cocoa growers can be sent to school, not out to work.

Insecticides harm people and ecosystems, and the insecticide industry is totally reliant on oil, which is a finite resource. The higher prices paid for organic cocoa help growers to take care or their families and the environment. This is why organic chocolate is important to me.

With so many different interpretations of the word "organic," and different legal standards for organic certification in different countries, how can customers know if they're really buying organic chocolate?

This is a frustratingly difficult question to answer. The simplest answer is: Buy certified organic.

Buying certified organic is what I do at the supermarket when I'm grocery shopping—however, I have so many reservations about the entire organic certification industry that I have chosen not to pursue organic certification for my own chocolate manufacturing business.

Consumers should be aware that some certifiers (and some manufacturers, and some retailers) are more trustworthy than others. If you're interested in a particular certifier or product, read the standards that they abide by. In some instances, you might be surprised by the laxness of the standards. If the standards aren't readily available to you, free of charge, be suspicious. Ask questions. If you are given vague answers, or no answers, be suspicious. As irritating and time consuming as it may be, try to be vigilant, and provide feedback to companies that either please or displease you. Concern and vigilance from consumers can and does make a real difference.

Even if you don't know very much about cocoa and chocolate, you can still look out for inconsistencies and contradictions in the stories that chocolate companies tell you. For instance, more than once I've had people in the chocolate industry boast to me about how poor their cocoa growers are. Their argument is that their chocolate must be organic, because their growers are too poor to afford pesticides. However, when questioned about whether they pay a fair price for their cocoa, they will claim that they pay their growers up to four times the market price. Here's the catch: if a grower was receiving four times the market price for his cocoa, he could easily afford insecticides.

(On the subject of cocoa grower poverty, I was moved by Paul Richardson's account of his visit to Chuao in Venezuela, where the world's most famous and sought-after cocoa is grown. In his 2003 book Indulgence, Richardson describes the "general poverty" of Chuao's inhabitants - and this was *after* Amedei had come in and started buying the entire crop for "almost twice as much" as Valrhona used to pay. If the most famous and reputedly well-paid cocoa growers in the world were still living in poverty in 2003, what does that imply about the financial status of all the other cocoa growers who work in total obscurity? And why should cocoa growers be so poor, when without them, we wouldn't have chocolate? It doesn't really seem fair, does it?)

How do you feel about chocolate companies that are committed to environmental sustainability but don't have organic certification?

I guess this is a bit of a loaded question, seeing as I operate that type of business myself.

A lack of organic certification doesn't prove a lack of commitment to the environment. But, if there's no certification (and in fact, even if there is certification) the whole issue really comes down to trust.

There are plenty of charlatans in the chocolate industry: people who, either through ignorance or dishonesty, will deceive ethical consumers who want cocoa growers to be treated fairly. For this reason, I always advise chocolate lovers not to automatically believe everything that a chocolate salesman tells them. It makes sense to exercise the same caution with all salesmen, regardless of whether they're selling you a used car or a chocolate bar.

When you set up camp on the moral high ground (as I have done), you create certain challenges for yourself. For instance, I tell people (my own customers included) not to automatically believe what chocolate makers tell them. I also tell people that our cocoa beans are grown organically on the island of Malekula in Vanuatu. Should they believe me? How can I prove that what I say is true? For that matter, how do I know that what I say is true?

It comes down to trust, and evidence. I've spent a lot of time pondering the issue of trust, and how I can earn it.

I always answer questions about our cocoa in detail. I spend an enormous amount of time educating myself about every aspect of chocolate and cocoa, so that I really know what I'm talking about. Unfortunately (but understandably) most chocolate lovers wouldn't have a clue when they're being lied to. That's why I spend a lot of time reading and responding to articles about chocolate, which all too often contain persistent myths and misconceptions.

I don't keep secrets about my cocoa sources, and I'm very suspicious about companies that do. "Secrets" can provide a very convenient way to conceal inconvenient information. I have absolutely nothing to fear from people knowing where my cocoa comes from.

Finally, I invite people to visit our growers, and see the truth for themselves. But even this kind of invitation doesn't really guarantee anything. For instance, I went to Ecuador on a similar invitation from Pierrick Chouard, to take a look at the story behind Plantations chocolate. I was fully expecting to see an inspirational model system in operation. What I actually saw were cocoa trees that had been cut down because they were so unprofitable for growers; I saw Rainforest Alliance-certified plantations with no rainforest in sight; I saw child labor, which was in direct contravention of both local laws and the Rainforest Alliance certification standards; and I saw a mish-mash of cocoa varieties being turned into a chocolate whose label claimed that it was made from "pure arriba cacao".

Some organic chocolate companies are more committed to the market than the environment. Should we be worried about that?

I would be overjoyed if any one of the multinational chocolate giants became genuinely organic. I really couldn't care less why a company goes organic, and if such a company was highly successful at marketing their organic products, then so much the better. If any of the big chocolate makers went organic—even for purely selfish reasons—the cocoa growers and the environment would be much better off.

I think the thing to worry about is when chocolate companies are attracted to obtaining certification for cynical reasons, with certifiers whose standards are weak or inadequately enforced. The Rainforest Alliance is a classic example. Its standards are much weaker than either organic or Fair Trade—but how many people bother to read their standards? They have a nice green logo with a picture of a frog, and they make comforting statements on their website about protecting rainforests—but I agree with others who argue that the Rainforest Alliance offers profit-driven companies a cheap and easy way to tap into the ethical consumer market.

Caveat emptor!

Sam Madell and her partner Langdon Stevenson, owners of Tava, purchase cacao beans on the South Pacific island of Vanuatu and sell them to customers around the world. They are currently building a new chocolate factory in New South Wales, Australia.

About the author: Emily Stone, proprietor of Chocolate in Context, is a chocolate enthusiast, itinerant traveler, and a lover of literature who lives in Pittsburgh. She's been a movie reviewer, a reproductive health researcher, and an independent bookstore owner. Her writing has appeared in the magazines Budget Travel, Travel + Leisure, and Time Out New York, as well as on the websites World Hum and Epicurious.

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Tags: chocolate, interviews, Serious Chocolate, Tava