A few months ago, at the height of Ghana’s main harvest, I spent two days watching the loading and unloading of cocoa.
I installed myself on the cocoa bean-bags that lined the patio of a district depot in Eastern region. Before this point, many farmers had carried cocoa to buying sheds in their villages, and sold it. Loaders had picked up the cocoa, and a truck had driven it to the depot.
In Ghana, cocoa stays at the depot long enough to be sorted, sealed into export bags, and graded. Then it is sent to port.
I wanted to watch the loaders lifting, sewing, carrying, and stacking the 64kg bags, because their work is among the forgotten labor of the supply chain.
If only chocolate lovers had to carry 140-pound blocks of the stuff home on their heads, every time they wanted to indulge, they would have some idea of the loaders’ work.
The ceaseless labor of moving cocoa
During the main harvest, loaders work ceaselessly. They load and unload cocoa at buying sheds and district depots, the enormous warehouses in Kumasi, in the Tema free zone where the multinationals have their processing factories, and at the Tema and Takoradi ports.
No one ever writes about them.
A holiday was approaching, and I asked the depot manager if the loaders would have a day off. He gave me a slightly condescending look, and replied,
“In the cocoa industry, we don’t have holidays. Even on Sundays, we work, when the need be.”
His men were tired, but the depot was bursting with cocoa and there was no more storage room. Another truckload would arrive soon from the villages. The cocoa had to move.
I sat back down in the last remaining stripe of shade on the patio. It was already ninety degrees Fahrenheit, and the few puffs of cloud were doing nothing to block the brutal sun.
Most of the loaders had stripped off their shirts, wearing shorts, gloves, and a soft beanie hat or rag to protect their heads from the scratchy jute bags. One or two wore flip-flops. The rest were barefoot.
Their task was to create stacks of fifteen bags of cocoa; two stacks of fifteen bags equals one lot. The graders count cocoa in lots, so the stacks had to be well-organized.
The loading team foreman moved a sack of cocoa onto a plastic mat spread out on the dirt.
Together, he and the first loader dead lifted the sack onto the loader’s head. The loader turned and strolled, casually it seemed, to a pallet at the roadside. With the slightest tip forward, he flipped the bag off his head and adjusted it to sit square on the pallet.
The loading team scarcely stopped for an hour and a half. In that time, they moved almost 34,000 pounds of cocoa.
(Update 15 April 2021: Andrew Moriarty @AD_Moriarty calculated that this much cocoa could make 60,000 – 70,000 200g bars of milk chocolate. Thank you Andrew for that remarkable figure.)
But wasn’t that “cheap cocoa” in those bags?
I posted a few pictures of the loaders on Instagram, and was surprised when many people commented. The comments were super thoughtful and engaged, and took respectful note of the toil. People sounded grateful to witness a part of the supply chain they rarely see.
Although no one wrote this explicitly, I felt there was an implicit suggestion that the loaders’ labor was somehow an exclusive feature of the mass-market for chocolate.
Truly, I could be misinterpreting, but I understood from some responses that if we “pay more” for chocolate (that is, buy expensive artisan bars), this labor would somehow get easier.
cheapchocolateisexpensive wrote: “The right thing to do is pay more for cacao beans because cheap prices are far too costly to the lives and livelihood of the … cacao farm workers … and their families.”
I agree 100% with cheapchocolateisexpensive, whose handle sums up the whole situation extremely well. The price of cocoa is too low, compared to the labor of keeping the supply chain in motion.
But in my observations, the inverse of “cheap chocolate is expensive” does not hold. That is, if chocolate is expensive, it does not automatically mean all the labor of the supply chain is somehow less “cheap”: easier, more fulfilling, or better-compensated.
The cocoa that you see in those sacks, in the pictures right here on this blog, attracted—to my knowledge—more premium money than any other cocoa in Ghana, for both organic certification and trade justice goals.
At least some of it will go on to artisan chocolate makers, who will turn it into expensive chocolate bars.
Premium or not, the labor is the same
This particular depot handles cocoa from Asetemapa cooperative, which has Fairtrade certification; Golden Bean, which has organic certification; and ABOCFA, which has both Fairtrade and organic certifications.
Because ABOCFA has such a strong cooperative and excellent governance, it has direct trade contracts with Tony’s Chocolonely, Taza Chocolate, and Uncommon Cacao, among several others.
Those three companies, as well as others that contract for the organic and/or Fairtrade-certified cocoa that moves through this depot, pay a premium for it, because it’s “the right thing to do.” Yes, it is.
But those premium payments don’t change the supply chain. This isn’t because those companies are doing something “wrong,” or not paying “enough.” Some of their premiums are among the highest in the business.
It’s because this is how you move cocoa from farm to port.
Maybe there are other ways, but in Africa, this is how it’s done. Whether the cocoa ends up in a Mars bar or a chocolate croissant or a super-premium, single-origin, bean-to-bar artisan creation, this is how it’s moved from place to place.
Paying more for chocolate has not changed this, and will not change it, unless some transport invention comes along that I am not imaginative enough to conceive.
The true cost of chocolate?
By the way, those loaders—they don’t see premium money, ever. Neither do the depot workers, the graders who ensure the cocoa is of the highest quality, the women who sell the loaders snacks (including—yes—chocolate), the port workers, the clerks keeping track of everything, the sailors on the container ships … you get the point.
Again, this is not the “fault” of any company. It’s how the system works.
If you want to ensure that every single person involved in moving cocoa from farm to factory to your mouth enjoys some sort of premium, then I don’t want to be the one to calculate how much that bar is going to cost you.
The sweaty, unceasing work of loading and unloading cocoa is a reality of the supply chain. Period.
I have yet to witness any way to make it more palatable or less grueling, no matter how much you pay for a chocolate bar.
If, in your work, you have seen a better way of moving cocoa at this level—bag by bag, pound by pound—I hope you will share your experience. The point of this blog is not to be defeatist, but to show reality, invite dialogue, and share possibility.
