[VIDEO] Cocoa Farmers Experience Precious Joy While Eating Chocolate For The First Time
The chunk of chocolate that we keep filling our mouths with whenever we want is a privilege we do not realise and it is something the very farmers who break their backs to harvest cocoa beans, the main ingredient in chocolate, cannot afford to have.
By Sadho Ram — 09 Aug 2014, 12:49 PM — Updated about 10 years ago
Ivory Coast happens to be the world's largest exporter of cocoa beans, the main ingredient in chocolate
But the impoverished farmers who break their backs to harvest the cocoa beans harvest generally never see and cannot afford to buy the finished product — your chunk of chocolate, something you would think that is everywhere, that everyone can enjoy. It’s not.
Earlier this year, Metropolis TV traveled to one cocoa farm in Ivory Coast to speak to the farmers about the problem
The chocolate industry is worth an estimated $110 billion dollars a year, CNN has reported. Wealthy areas of North America and Europe consume most of the world’s chocolate, while most cocoa beans are grown in West Africa.
cnn.com
The average cocoa farmer lives on less than the equivalent of $2 a day, while under 5% of the price of the average chocolate makes its way back to the farmers, according to Oxfam. youtube.com
oxfamamerica.org
Some of the farmers were given chocolate to hold and taste for the first time in their life. Their responses?
The group grins from ear to ear while sampling the product that they have helped to make for most of their lives, but never actually had the opportunity to taste
“No wonder why white people stay so healthy!” says one farmer, ironically, in the video, as he tastes the chocolate bar.
thedailymeal.com
Most of the farmers believed that the cocoa beans were actually used to make wine, and even asked if it made the videographer’s skin lighter.
The joy that emanates from their faces contrasts with the grim reality that these hard workers have to face on a daily basis
After all, a chocolate bar in the Ivory Coast costs €2, while N’Da Alfonse, the worker on the plantation in the video, uses his meager salary of €7 per day to take care of 15 family members and four laborers.
thedailymeal.com
And even though the Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of the cocoa bean, the farmers and plantation workers who harvest the bean are at the bottom of the food chain
This food chain is so high, that these workers cannot even squint to see the chocolate crunch bar at the top.
thedailymeal.com
“We complain because growing cocoa is hard work,” says Alfonse humbly at the end of the video. “Now we get to enjoy the result. What a privilege.”