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Disclosure:

I was on the same University of Chocolate trip to Ecuador in 2005 that both Sam and Langdon were on. I think I am responsible for convincing them to make the trip. I, too, was surprised at a lot of what I saw there.

Hi, Sam! Hi, Langdon!

That said, think a lot of this is the pot calling the kettle black:

Wages

The minimum wage in the US (about $15,000 for 2000 hours/year -- BEFORE TAXES) isn't enough to support a family of four these days in lots of US cities; while it may be above the official poverty line I can assure you it would be a threadbare existence.

Child Labor

While one definition of chores might be "household tasks like washing the dishes, or doing the laundry," I can assure you that the chores on a family farm in the US (and Australia - I have relatives that own a sheep station and I have been there during shearing) include tasks that involve heavy physical labor. Is AU$20 week allowance fair pay for the work being done?

We can bicker about this all we want, but we can't pretend that the problem is only in far-away places. Chances are there's an emotionally and/or sexually abused child on family farm being asked to perform "adult" chores for starvation wages (allowance) within an hour of where you are sitting as you read this. Is that morally any different from a child on a family farm in Ecuador or Costa Rica?

Sustainability

Reading Sam's account, there is no way cacao can be a sustainable commodity because of the oil required to transport it. If we take Sam's argument literally and to its illogical extreme, the TAVA factory should be in Vanuatu within horse-drawn cart distance of the village where the cacao is grown, made completely from materials sourced within a day's walk, be 100% solar-powered, and the chocolate made solely for local consumption so as not to consume any petrochemicals. Of course, a cacao/chocolate business organized along those principles wouldn't be sustainable, would it? The Grenada Chocolate Company comes remarkably close except that they only source 25% of their power from their solar installation and the finished chocolate has to be shipped off the island.

Fair Trade Often Isn't

At the risk of being very non-PC, FLO is a bunch of white people in air-conditioned offices in Europe telling non-white farmers toiling in the tropics what's fair. Come again? How come the farmers didn't get to decide what was fair?

Certification Programs, Useful as They Are, All Share the Same Basic Flaws

The farmer or the co-op has to pay a certification fee. Certification organizations are businesses and I think they should pay the farmers rather than charge them. It is the cost of certification, which is borne by the farmers and co-ops, that is the largest barrier to widespread certification. After how many years how many Fair Trade/RA certified cocoa co-ops are there?

The farmer bears all the risk. FLO takes a fixed fee per unit irrespective of the price of the commodity involved. The fee FLO takes should float along with the commodity so that they are sufficiently motivated - as a business - to do what's necessary to grow the business. Right now the economics are entirely artificial and therefore not sustainable.

All certification programs assume that all actors in the supply chain are honest. Come again? We don't assume that our governments are honest so why should we assume that some cooperative in Ecuador is above reproach?

In Conclusion:

While I agree that certification programs are better than not having certification programs, they are only one approach. I agree that rather than arguing over the relative merits of one approach over another, the goal should be to try as many things as possible to see what works best. What works best in one country may not work in another. There are no simple answers, there is no magic bullet.

Where I do applaud Sam and Langdon, from what I have seen of their trips to Vanuatu, what I have heard them say, and what I recognize as their determination and commitment to make it work is that they are taking personal responsibility for implementing their position; they are walking the walk, not just talking the talk. Mott Green (founder of the Grenada Chocolate Company) falls into that category, too. They are not handing off their responsibility to some third-party certification organization which has different business objectives. They are living their ethics, day in and day out.

In the long run, I think that's what's necessary - taking personal and/or corporate responsibility. Unfortunately that's expensive, so public companies, ever mindful of their share price, will never be allowed to do the right thing by stock market analysts who punish the share price if earnings are as little as a penny under expectations. They will always abdicate responsibility to NGOs and claim that they are doing the "right" thing. Not.

:: Clay
www.discoverchocolate.com