Stoic Wellbeing - Chocolate: How Can We Be Ethical Consumers?

Episode Date: December 10, 2022

Chocolate. Lots of us love it. Where does it come from? Who makes it? And how can we be ethical consumers of chocolate? I want the answer to be easy — like, just by such-and-such chocolate bar. But the answer is more complicated than that. Today I’m speaking with cocoa and chocolate scholar (and lover of chocolate) Dr. Kristy Leissle, an American who now lives in South Africa.Kristy, aka Dr. Chocolate, wrote the book Cocoa and has spent her career studying the politics, economics, and cultures of the cocoa-chocolate trade in Africa, Europe, and North America. She also co-founded the Cocoapreneurship Institute of Ghana, which supports entrepreneurs working at any stage of the cocoa value chain in West Africa.I absolutely love the stories Kristy shares in this episode about how travel and learning from and befriending people from other nations and cultures led her to becoming Dr. Chocolate. So, can we be virtuous consumers of chocolate? What does that even mean? Kristy and I get into it. P.S. If you’re in an English-speaking country, it’s pronounced co-co, not ca-cow. So the next time you’re in a snobby artisanal shop and they start talking about ca-cow, you can correct them and say, “Actually, Dr. Chocolate says it’s cocoa and she has a PhD in the matter.”Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

A lot of us say that we want more meaning in our lives to be part of something greater than ourselves, to feel more connected to other people in the universe. This begins with becoming more connected with who we are and more self-aware of what's unconsciously motivating us. Welcome to Stoic Wellbeing. I'm your host to Sarah Megatel, an American in England who uses stoicism and other techniques to help my coaching clients become more present, productive, and open-hearted. I am here to help you to visit Stoicwellbeing.com to learn more. Chocolate. Lots of us love it. Where does it come from? Who makes it? And how can we be ethical consumers of chocolate? I want the answer to be easy, like just buy such and such chocolate bar. But the answer is more complicated than that. Today I am speaking with Cocoa and Chocolate scholar and a lover of chocolate, Dr. Christy Leslie. Christy, aka Dr. Chocolate, wrote the book Cocoa, and she has spent her career studying the politics, economics, and cultures of the cocoa chocolate trade. She also co-founded the Cocopreneurship Instincts. of Ghana, and they support entrepreneurs who are working at every stage of the cocoa value chain

in West Africa. Christy is an American and now living in South Africa, and I absolutely love the stories that she shares in this episode about how travel and learning from and befriending people from other nations and cultures led her to becoming Dr. Chocolate. So can we be virtuous consumers of chocolate? What does that even mean? Christy and I get into it. Enjoy the episode. P.S., if you are in an English-speaking country, it's pronounced cocoa, not cacao. So the next time you are in a snobby artisanal shop and they start talking about cacao, you will know it's really cocoa. And that is coming from Dr. Chocolate. Welcome, Christy.

Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you. I think I read that you left New York at 18 to go to Europe. What prompted that move? Gosh, something inside of me that I still can't quite define because no one in my family has the same. desire, I think, were expressed a desire anyway. They may have the desire, but never really

showed it or demonstrated it. But just something inside me really felt like New York, where I grew up, you know, it was, it was kind of a gilded cage, if I might use that expression. Like, there was so much that was amazing about it. And I had so many different experiences there that I wouldn't have had if I'd grown up in a different place, culturally very rich. But at the same time, I knew there was more, and I knew that if I didn't start on the journey of exploration, then I might stay in New York forever. It would be very easy to do that. So push myself beyond that context and really haven't kind of stopped moving since.

So where was your first adventure? Where did you go? So I think the very first place I went was Boston. So I started my university studies in Boston. And already that was like completely different, you know, from growing up on Long Island and other parts of New York. You know, Boston was a very different city. So I started there and, you know, began to have that sense that there was just more to the

world, different kinds of people, different foods to eat, you know, different ways to travel and get around. And then I was very fortunate to be able to study abroad and had various options at my university that I could pursue. And so I ended up going to England. And that was, I think, my breakthrough as far as a global vision. And the reason for that was because I went to a very international university there in the UK. And I made some very close friends from Southern Africa. And becoming friends with these people made me want to go and see where they were from. And so kind of from Europe, I headed straight to southern Africa. And in fact, that's where I'm speaking from now. I'm in

Johannesburg. So I've kind of come full circle, travel to a few different places along the way, but came back to where I kind of first began my big adventures. Was there something that you remember that you learned from your South African friends, where you were like, wow, that is so different from Long Island? Definitely. I mean, I first came to South African. Africa in 1997. It was the very end of 1997. And, you know, apartheid had only ended three years before that. The first Democratic elections here were in 1994. And so it was a time of real change and profound social change and political change. And I remember, of course, growing up and

especially in my later studies, I knew about apartheid. I knew about the system here and how egregious it was. And when I landed, when my plane landed in Cape Town, when you leave the Cape Town Airport, you drive past the Cape Flats, as they're known, a township, which is a very poor area, housing, as I'm sure you and your listeners know, made of literally any material, like anything could be a piece of cardboard or, some bits of wood or was around. And I had never seen anything like that before, you know, just mile after mile of townships. And my friend who I was visiting, I remember so clearly, she turned to me in the car and she said, oh, you've never, you've never seen a township before, have you? And I said no. And that moment has stayed with me over these many years. You know, it's been more than 20 years ago now, probably closer to 25. And in that moment, I just realized, wow, Christy, like, there is so much that you do not know.

Like, there is so much about the way people live, about the systems that, you know, oppress and the systems that liberate and this, you know, and what people have to do to get by in the every day that that I didn't have to do. And I always return to that moment and reflect on it as this kind of shift in me to thinking that my worldview until then had been very limited. and just wanting to know, wanting to educate myself. And the way that I found to do that was to experience, go to places, meet people, talk to people who had different life experiences to me. And I never really thought about it this way, but it's become a central part of my professional work in ways that I hadn't anticipated.

and I'm still processing now. What set you on this trajectory? Because I think I read that you studied abroad for like eight months and you got to choose studying chocolate or doing sort of like a global tour. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. How did that idea even, how did that idea even come about like that was a possibility? Yeah, so it was, yeah, thank you for bringing that up. Yeah, you've researched and I know what you're referring to.

So basically, when I started my PhD, I was studying water. I was studying the privatization of water utilities in Senegal. And it just happened that my University of Washington had this, it's maybe not a unique opportunity, but it's very rare. We had a fellowship where you were required to not study anything. You had to just travel. And it was, at the time, at the time, it was a four-month travel experience. Now the fellowship has changed and it's eight months now. And basically, I applied and when I sat down, oh, I remember the day.

I remember it like I'm there right now. I was living in Seattle. I went to University of Washington and it was, of course, raining and it was dark. And I was like by myself in the computer lab up on campus. and I was like watching like the like black rain like drive into the window and it was so horrible. And I said to myself, gosh, Christy, like what would be your best thing in the world right now to just get away from this?

And so I proposed for this travel fellowship that I would just travel around the world like basically tasting chocolate, you know? And long story short, I got the fellowship. And when I told my events, advisor, my committee chair, she said, wow, that's like a way better idea for doctoral dissertation. Why don't you do that instead? So I had this amazing opportunity then, which was to do the fellowship, which I did with great joy and did my four months traveling, exploring, just being with chocolate and all these different places and Hawaii and Malaysia, even India, Finland.

Like, I went wherever. I went anywhere I pleased. And then for the rest of that year, I settled down and did my proper field work in Ghana and in London. So it was like totally random. Random. Completely random. And thanks to my advisor who had the idea, you know, she had a vision. She said, Christy, do this. It's way better. I said, okay. I'm not going to say no. Yeah. It's a hard thing to say no to. Do you want to study Java for your PhD? Okay. So. So. So you spent that four months. Was that more on the retail side of things? So tasting chocolate in Europe and Asia and then the research came after.

Is that what you said? It was, I did my travel four months as a mixture of both like the tasting part and the cocoa side. So I took the opportunity. I mean, obviously I went to like every chocolate, everything I could find in unusual places. You know, and like I remember Singapore. was really important to me on that trip because I'd never been to Singapore before and I would go to like this chocolate shop every morning and like literally have my breakfast there. The people knew me, you know, and they were like serving me my favorite thing.

So, you know, I wanted to have like the chocolate, the chocolate experience. And then I would do things like I went to Hawaii and I spent some time with the Hawaiian cocoa growers and I went to Malaysia and I spent time with Malaysian cocoa board. And so just like kind of take following whatever, whatever path like open before my eyes. So yeah, I did a bit of both. What a dream. It was great. Before we go on, I have to hear what your chocolate breakfast was in Singapore.

It was like a Sunday. It was like chocolate ice cream with this chocolate fudge topping and then probably some other chocolate thing. But I also remember it very well because one day, the guy behind the counter said you have the same thing every day why don't you try this other topping and i was like all right and it was like turned crunchy it was like that kind of topping that turns hard and crunchy when it hits the cold ice cream which i really don't like and i remember being so sad i mean i didn't have endless funds it wasn't like i could throw it in the trash and try a new

one so i was like remember being really grumpy that day because it was like oh you ruined my chocolate breakfast. But he was only trying to help me see a new thing. Do you remember the name of that place? I wonder if it's still there. I don't even know. I don't know. This is so long ago. I mean, it might still be there. But, you know, that, I mean, it's funny you say that because the, I have been able to return to a couple of places, you know, that I was, that I went to in that year. And some of them are gone. And that was like a kind of passage of time. But I have such strong. memories from these places. And they were so important to me. And then when you go back and find that they're gone, it's like, well, why wasn't this place important to everybody? I know.

You mentioned Malaysia, Singapore, but chocolate and cocoa are not native to these regions. So can you take us on a sort of whistle-stop tour of the invention of chocolate and cocoa where its origins came from. Definitely, yeah, that'll be fun. So, you know, it's the cocoa tree, Theo Brama cacao, is indigenous to Latin America. So the tree first appeared somewhere in the Amazon River basin, either present-day Ecuador or Peru, and really traveled up with people north into present-day Central America. And it was there that it was really became very well established in the Mayan and Aztec civilizations and prior to them the old mechs as a drink essentially and along with many other uses beans reuse as currency and so forth so you know but chocolate it wasn't

chocolate of course then it wasn't like a bar it wasn't industrial it was like I said it was a drink and it was culturally very very very important not in the same way as it is for us today but it was is the kind of everyone would have known what cocoa was and everyone would have had some relationship with it, even if it was just to grow it. And, you know, that really, really shifted. It's like no one else in the world knew about cocoa apart from the people in central and parts of northern South America. And until the colonial period.

And then we see this tremendous shift where, you know, the populations of, of Central and South America were so decimated from disease and general violence of colonialism that literally the labor force was no longer there to grow cocoa at scale. And at the same time as this was happening, Europeans, you know, part of the colonial endeavor were bringing recipes back, introducing cocoa to people in Europe and they were acquiring a taste for it. And at this time, we also then see the colonial effort bringing large-scale production of cocoa, or let me say the reasons for large-scale cocoa production to Africa and West Africa in particular. So it was kind of like chicken and egg.

You know, you had the conditions set up for demand to grow. Europeans were getting this taste for chocolate. They were at the same time, for many reasons, having more disposable income to spend on, you know, non-necessities like chocolate. It was industrializing. It was becoming possible to mass market it as a bar. And at the same time that there were economic reasons for farmers in West Africa to, to switch to growing cocoa. So it was like this perfect, you know, set of circumstances that essentially you see the value

chain completely shift from being totally within Central and South America, production, trade, you know, processing and consumption all within that one area globally to being a global, a global value chain and with West Africa dominating very quickly in production and consumption dominating quite quickly in Europe and then of course North America as well. So total shift, complete shift. Yeah, I read in your book Coco that it started out, cocoa was started out in Europe. It's like a drink or like a treat for the elite and then the men who were in like cocoa houses and coffee houses having all. of their debates. So it was not something like for the average poor personal industrialization came

in and made it so cheap. And at the same time, you know, the people who, the workers who were behind that industrialization also began to have disposable income. You know, they moved away from these kind of village-based economies where you might barter or you might, you know, trade locally made goods to an wage-based economy. So it was like, not only, were they making things in factories. They also were getting wages so that they could buy stuff. And so, you know, and one of the things that people could buy was chocolate. As far as luxuries go, it was an affordable one.

I, when I was a kid, went to Hershey Park with my parents. And I have like a memory of, I think being on a ride where we went through sort of a chocolate factory. And I thought it was so cool. And my sister and I as our souvenirs, I'm sure we got chocolate as well. But we got these fingernail clippers and I had a Mr. Goodbar one and she had Reese's peanut butter cups and we still have them to this day. But then, you know, years later, I started to read about slave labor and chocolate. You know, there's been a number of lawsuits. Recently there was a lawsuit got thrown out that Hershey and a few other companies were a part of that would have held them liable for child labor practices.

And so I was like immediately, Hershey, you're dead to me. I am never like, that's it. I'm only going to buy ethical chocolate now. And I do only buy chocolate that like Tony's chocolate only is my favorite. However, I know my sort of immediate dismissal of Hershey is a much more simplistic response than I think somebody who in your situation who has been studying this for years would say, I don't know. I would like to hear your thoughts on this because I know.

when we read about this stuff in the newspaper for us, it like punches us in the gut and it seems so black and white, but I know there's so much nuance. So how can we be ethical consumers of chocolate? Thank you for that question. It is a really important question. And I'm, I'm so grateful that you're, you've reflected on it and, and make that connection to, you know, like there's people behind these goods that we buy. You know, there's people. And, and they're not just something we pluck off a store. shelf, you know, there's a whole long history and set of connections there that we need to acknowledge. And I don't think we do that enough, you know. And that actually just may be the heart of my answer is that, you know, that's already for me enough is to just recognize the humanity behind the products that we buy and to acknowledge that labor has gone into this. This is not, they don't, chocolate bars don't just magically appear on the shelves, you know. And as somebody who has witnessed the labor at virtually every stage of the supply chain and the value chain, you know,

from the farmers who are plucking the pods off the trees, right through the guys who are lifting the bags of cocoa onto trucks and into factories and the guys who work in the ships. I mean, in the factories, everybody, I've seen, I've seen this. And it's like most, most, what people want is to be acknowledged. You know, they want to be seen and they want to be heard. And I feel very fortunate that my career has progressed, you know, that my professional path has taken me to a place where I can listen to their stories and I can, you know, give them the opportunity to be listened to and hopefully then write about it and and share on the various platforms that I have.

And so, you know, I think that for me is kind of the heart of it. And I know that's not really an answer to your question. So I'll try to say it in a different way. I don't divide up chocolate products into ethical versus non-ethical. And I know that really goes against the grain. And it's not what people would normally say because we're used to categories. Like this one has a label of fair trade or, you know, rainforest lands or whatever. So therefore, this is like the ethical chocolate. And then there's

this other chocolate over here that doesn't have those things. Maybe it's made by a very big company or whatever. So we don't trust it. I don't approach chocolate in that way. And the reason for that is because cocoa farmers are not grouped into like good people and bad people. And it's not like the good farmers only sell cocoa that ends up in this chocolate bar and like some bad group of farmers only sells cocoa that ends up in these bars. No, I mean, cocoa farmers are people. They're people. In every community that you go to, you will find some people who have more care and concern, you know, for labor, for the people in their productive orbit, you know, who are more attuned to safety or health and well-being, and people who are less so, you know. And for me,

I'll eat any chocolate at any time because when I imagine all of the labor behind it, I just see people in all of their variability, in all of their goodness, and all of their less goodness. And when it comes to cocoa farming, they're really, really, really hard work. You know, it's like, I'm just grateful that anybody does this labor because, I wouldn't want to do it. Yeah. I mean, you've seen a lot.

Could you, and you've interviewed so many people, could you sort of paint a picture of how difficult this work actually is? It's so hard. I mean, from a physical standpoint, not only is the labor hard, but the environment is really tough. You know, it's like cocoa grows in tropical rainforest essentially. You know, that's where it's indigenous to you in the Amazon. That's where it grows best now. It is not a comfortable environment. You know, it is very high.

It is very humid. Like, you just buckets of sweat, you know, I mean, it is not possible to be physically comfortable in that environment as someone who didn't grow up in that environment. It's hard to get water. It's hard to get cool. It's hard to, I mean, if we move into the conversation about infrastructure, it's hard to find sanitation facilities. Like, it's just, everything is difficult.

Preparing food is a whole process that usually. starts with like harvesting something from a tree or from the ground and then beginning the very laborious process of cooking it. It's like there's no you just call up a Uber Eats. You know, it's like there's nothing. So, you know, and the labor itself is just not easy. Like there is no way to mechanize on a large scale, the farm work of cocoa. I'm not saying the machines don't exist. There are like different kinds of machines that will crack open cocoa pods and all of that stuff. But nobody really uses them. And there's essentially no opportunity to introduce them on a large scale in the cocoa farming environment, especially not West Africa.

You know, it's like between just Ghana and Ivory Coast, we're talking about 60% of all cocoa in the world. It's just like we're talking about millions of people. You can't get mechanized technologies into these rural areas at scale. So, you know, farmers will go a few times a season. And the harvest goes from October through about January in a normal year where the rains and the climate are normal. And you start with a, it's called a cutlass in West Africa, but listeners may be more familiar with the term machete, essentially a big knife. harvest every pod off of every tree. Like, I'm going to, like, say, like, millions of them every season.

And then you've got to crack them open. So just like a very, just a basic thing I want to, like, throw in there. So Coke chocolate comes from, like, these big pods. Can you just explain that? I guess really quick. Definitely. Yeah. Thank you for that.

I get ahead of myself a little bit sometimes. Yeah. So cocoa grows on a tree. It's a fruit. And it is, the fruit is in the shape of like American football. It's like an oblong pod green before it's ripe and then turns yellow or orange or sometimes it's red. And you harvest that fruit and then you have to crack it open. It's got a very, very thick shell.

It won't just break automatically. Like if you, I suppose if you really threw it hard on the ground, it might crack. you generally need some kind of blade or maybe rocks or sticks you can crack it open with. And inside are the seeds. And the seeds are covered by essentially what is the fruit, but it's not like an apple. You can't bite it. It's like a paste. And the seeds are covered by this paste.

You scoop them out. You must ferment them with that fruity paste. there because that's what has the sugars that activate the fermentation process. And then after that, you dry them. And then the seed is essentially what you make chocolate out of. So we're talking about the seed of Theobroma cacao is the basis of chocolate. And so billions upon billions of seeds every year are harvested and become the basis of everything chocolate that we eat from brownies to out.

ice cream to chocolate bars or you name it. It all comes down to that seed. So farmers, they are doing all of this hard work, but they're reaping like a very small amount of profits. And you raise like a really interesting point for me in your book where I think we equate often the expense of chocolate with ethics sometimes and just make the assumption that people further down the chain are probably getting paid more because we're paying more. But that's not the case. Could you speak to that a little bit? Yeah, definitely.

I mean, there's very little relationship between the price of a chocolate bar and what a farmer gets paid. You know, when you buy a chocolate bar at any price, the farmer has traded those beans and been paid for them so long ago that it's not like you pay. and then that money somehow gets to the farmer. It's a bigger cycle than that. And what determines what a farmer gets paid for their beans is not the price of a chocolate bar. It's just not. You know, it's a global pricing mechanism in which the largest companies of the

world have influence by virtue of the scale of their purchases. Governments have influence. In Ghana's case, the government sets the price for the producer price. So they decide every year, gone on Koko Board, how much farmers are going to get paid, and they make that price. And so, you know, it's very, very, very difficult to influence that. And I think we've kind of been, we've had this strong suggestion over the years, you know, by certification programs like Fair Trade or what have you, which have many, many benefits. But we've been kind of led to believe that there is this one-day-old. to one relationship.

Like we as an individual, like I can go and buy this chocolate bar that gives me some relationship with an individual farmer. And that's happened largely through the introduction of like visual imagery, pictures of farmers in advertising, sometimes even on the chocolate bar package, stories about farmers that are like embedded in the chocolate retail experience. And that gives us the sense that we have like the, we are somehow connected in an individual. individual way. And that's, in my experience, just not, just not reality. You know, it's like, cocoa is a system that's, the trading of cocoa is a system that's larger than any of us, you know.

And I think if you, if you live in Ghana, especially and have experience with the industry in Ghana, the number one most important institution when it comes to cocoa farming and its impact on people is Ghana a cocoa board. It's like it is not Nestle. It's not Mars. It's not like Hershey. It's gone a cocoa board. And we never talk about that. Like we would never, you never like hear in conversations about ethics, oh, like gone to cocoa board or it's equivalent in Ivory Coast. We don't think about that because we're kind of taught to think in this individual way. In my experience, it's it's just not how the industry set up. And I'm not saying that as a consumer, you're powerless.

Not at all. We have the opportunity for collective action and we can make decisions about the products that we buy. But that doesn't translate into individual impact on one person. Another way that I can say this that maybe will resonate more is that when I ask Google Farmers, like, what would change things for you? like what would make your life easier. Not a single farmer in, like, I've been doing this for 17 years. It's like not a single farmer has ever said to me, people should buy this chocolate bar, you know. Like they might say, we hope that, you know, people outside, which is the kind of term for anything beyond Ghana, they might be, we hope people outside continue to enjoy chocolate and because there are our main customers, they know that.

but they're very aware of who's at the other end. But no one's ever translated it for me into that individual experience. It's not like buy this brand and my life will be better. You know, the farmers look to other possibilities for improvement. What are they saying? Price is a big one. You know, so every farmer is aware of the price that they get for Kouko, obviously. And, you know, so pressure on price, upward pressure on price.

which again in Ghana would come mainly through the government is something they talk about a lot. Land is probably the biggest one. It's like price and land. You know, there's just not a lot of room left for expansion in Ghana. So it's not like you're a farmer and you're like, oh, I want to grow more. You don't just go out and like get more land because there's no land really left to do that expansion. So obviously, again, like, farmers would recognize that as a limitation, you know, and some way to intensify production on the land that they have is generally where people's thoughts go. If I ask them, what would improve your circumstance?

I would need some way to make my existing land more productive, to have a better yield. And, you know, and these are the kind of material things, like the price and the land itself. But then, of course, there's also like the social things like gender. You know, the gender relations are quite strict, you know, in terms of what women can do, in terms, you know, on their farms and the labor that they can do. And, you know, I've had many women say to me that it's what would help them is more specific attention to women's circumstances. and the limitations that they face. And so it's just a variety of things that farmers have to encounter on everyday basis.

I've got this much land. This is the price this season. This is how my gender impacts what I can do. That's their everyday reality. I've heard you say that it would be helpful to get more African voices in Cocoa and Chocolate conferences. What do you hope the outcome would be more influence? You know, could prices change by having this sort of dialogue? Like what do you think could happen?

I do you think potentially price could change, but what I think would have to happen long before that and what I would see as already a good outcome is, you know, a couple of things. Like first, the sort of humanization of Africa because you maybe have to spend 30 seconds researching Cocoa to come across a headline that is talking about all the horrible stuff that is supposedly going on in West Africa. So there is a lot of stereotypical.

By the horrible stuff, you mean slavery, child labor. Yes. And so like stereotypical ideas about lack of morality, lack of, you know, like, whatever, civilization, you know, in quotes. All of these ideas that circulate about the African continent, you know, play a big role in chocolate narratives. You know, like we, the, the default is to say that everybody in West Africa is bad and is enslaving their own children and it's all like everyone is a slave who's making your growing cocoa for each other. In my own role, I sometimes have the opportunity to organize a panel or moderate a panel or bring people into discussion around these.

things in public forums. And I do, I make every effort to bring in my friends and colleagues, you know, from West Africa into these conversations because they're not normally invited. The kind of fine chocolate world that tends to host these sorts of conversations doesn't usually look to West Africa for experts. They tend to look to Central, South America, even Asia. I think bringing African voices into conversation, particularly West African voices, is so critical because every person I've ever interacted with on a panel or in some kind of public discussion who's from Ghana or Ivory Coast has insisted upon sharing their reality. and their reality is not what we hear in the headlines.

You know, I have had farmers come and say, you know, like my children are my children, you know. It's like my interest, I have only the best possible intentions around them. Like these are my sons. These are my daughters. Why would I harm them? Why would I put them in a scenario of harm? things like this that just do not make it into the conversations, you know, and I think we need to hear from, rather than talking about West African people, we need to hear from West African people. You know, we need for their voices to be the ones that are leading these conversations. In my experience, that's not what happens. It's like a very much a top-down narrative. It's a narrative about child labor and slave labor that has been.

imposed upon West Africa. I'm not saying that people are not harmed. I'm not saying that children are not in difficult situations. Many are, but it is not the everyday tale. It is not the day-to-day reality, and it's certainly not the dominant narrative. It's like if you spend any time in a cocoa farming village, you know, it's in my experience, again, like 17 years of doing this, it has not been, something I've confronted. I've not seen it. You know, I've not seen people in situations of forced labor or harm. I've not seen people in what we would call a slavery situation. I've seen a heck of a lot of children playing on farms. You know, I've seen lots of kids like trailing after their parents or playing in groups. And I mean, it's just I see kind of normal stuff, you know. So,

But it's not for me to say, you know, this is like, I'm a foreigner. I'm not of this context. So I can't be the one to offer you any assurance. West Africanians themselves must be at the center of this conversation. But then I think there's the other side of it, which is, I will say the same thing about the people who work for the big chocolate companies or any chocolate company, even an artisan chaga company, who we tend to think of as like, inherently wonderful. The people who work in chocolate, it's the same like with cocoa farmers. There are some people who are really, really well-intentioned who put in their time, their boots on the ground, they are listening, they're learning, they have the motivation

and the knowledge and the skill to make some impact in a positive way on cocoa farmers. I've also met a lot of people working in the chocolate industry who are not so great, you know, who are not people that I would count among my list of top people who work with integrity. And that holds true at the artisanal scale all the way up to the mass market people. You know, it's like I'm not going to draw a line anywhere and say that because you work for a big company, you're inherently bad. and because you work for a small company, you're inherently good. That's not, I will never be convinced about that because it's not what I've seen. So it's kind of like the same thing. It's like people are people.

We have different motivations. We have different levels of integrity that we work with. And we have different boundaries regarding how much kind of bad or good stuff we're willing to do in our work. And when I think about the way we approach Coco, when it comes to transparency, the other argument that I probably don't make enough is that transparency only works in one direction. You know, like transparency, all we ever want to know is what are the farmers doing. Show me everything about the farmer so that I can believe that they didn't enslave a child. The default is farmers are doing something horrible.

And they need to prove to me that they didn't do that horrible thing. I say, first of all, let's start from a place of trust and prove to me that you did something wrong, not that you need to do something right. But why don't we turn that transparency lens back on the chocolate side of things? You know, we just don't. Nobody ever introduces the idea of like, oh, let's go and embed with all the top, you know, owners of all the companies large and small and observe them, you know, and see how much do they make, you know, what, how do they, do they do they do they do they do charitable giving? You know, do they like have good relations with their neighbors, you know, do they, does everyone on their block like think they're awesome or think they're not so great? You know, it's like, we don't do that. For me, I think there's more reason to want transparency at that end than there is to want transparency at the farming end. I wanted to ask about Tony's Chuck Lonely because their whole thing is like 100% transparency. Could you just, because I know you've visited them, could you talk a little about like what Tony's Chuck Lonely is and what they're trying to do?

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I know the folks at Tony's. I have some friends who work there. I have some acquaintances. I've been with them in Ghana. I've been with them in Amsterdam where they're based. And so, you know, Tony's has a very, very clear vision. You know, they want slave-free chocolate, essentially, was how they, you know, they started. But remember, like, Tony's is a company that was started by a journalist. And so this is not a chocolate maker.

This is, you know, someone who went and followed the threat of a story about slave labor and thought I can make a product that would, make a contribution for the better, you know, when problems occur. I think I'm not going to categorize Tony's any differently than any other chocolate company, you know, and I will say the same thing about any company that is trying to do something correct when it comes to trade justice, whether that's gender justice or labor justice or, you know, economic justice, whatever it is. The intention is absolutely fantastic. I am behind the intention 100%.

I want more justice along the Kogo Value chain. I've seen the injustice with my own eyes too many times. And that is an honorable vision for a chocolate company. But I come back to what I've been saying all along, which is that the environment is complex. It is populated with normal human beings who are on a whole, whole range of, you know, good, bad and mostly in between. And that context is bigger than all of us. It's bigger than me. It's bigger than Tonys. It's bigger than Hershey's. It's, it is what it is.

And I do think that we, again, give a lot more. We imagine that a company like Tonys or even an individual activist has more. power than they really do. You know, it's like if you look at volumes alone, it's like, you know, millions of metric tons of cocoa moving around the world every year, a company the size of Tonys is a drop in the bucket. And that same thing is true for every other company. So again, I don't, I don't want to, I'm not like picking on Tony's.

I'm not like, this is, this would be true for any. And it's a great illustration because they are so much in our kind of conversations around trade justice. but I can say the same thing for any chocolate company. And I would say it even more forcefully for the artisan chocolate makers, who we also tend to think are like revolutionizing the Valley chain. And it's like some of those people buy like one bag of cocoa a year. You know, there's very little room for impact in terms of scale and economy.

So I love Tony's. I was just in Amsterdam. with my mom a few weeks ago, we went to the Tony store. It happened to be right across from our hotel. We went bananas. We bought bars for everybody. We bought bars for ourselves. Like I brought home, I think, four or five bars here.

My husband inhaled them in like a minute. You know, it's like, I love Tony's chocolate. And I'm not ashamed to say that. And I think that do I think that any company can have a global impact in terms of purifying, you know, like, you know, or eradicating all of the injustice along the supply chain? No, definitely not. What hope is there, Chrissy? What hope is there? Is there anything? This conversation, any conversation, like the fact that you reached out, the fact that you are thinking about these things, the fact that you're inviting your listeners in to a conversation

about complexity. For me, that's hope. For me, hope comes from, it comes from the desire to understand beyond the superficial. It comes from the recognition that we are all led to believe in stereotypes and wanting that not to be true.

You know, like wanting to go beyond that, wanting to complexify, wanting to dig deeper, wanting to educate ourselves. Like, to me, that's all the hope I need, because it's these stereotypical ideas, these ways that we paint huge swaths of humanity with some ridiculous brush, you know, and say,

that's who you are. Even though I've never met you and I'm never going to come to your place, I'm going to say these things about you. anytime that we take the initiative to go beyond that, for me is hope. Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.