Had no idea the Ghanian chocolate industry was close to the equivalent of blood diamonds in their trade and equity. Thanks for this insightful piece, Sunday Morning!
I love Tony's Chocolate I support them, now I will support them even more. I'm also going online to buy 57 chocolate and support them The internet is connecting us all in good ways
@@tubecontributor3206 - compared with what? Have you done the math on the cost per ounce or the cost per gram? It’s surprisingly inexpensive when you compare it with other industrial brands.
Thank you Tony’s Chocolate. I just placed an order of your candy at Target for Halloween. From now on, I will think twice before buying any other chocolate.
This is how I feel about Mexico. How is it that people don’t know us for our chocolate when we are the birthplace of chocolate? Furthermore How is it that we grow so much coffee but people have no idea and our own people are relegated to drinking mostly instant Nescafé coffee? We grow it in our back yard why are we (mexicans) the ones drinking instant and bulk coffee. We can mostly only buy coffee that is grown and packaged in another continent and it’s awful in taste. It’s just not right.
I worked over the course of more than three years in the state of Tabasco trying to find answers to that question. Like many things in cocoa and chocolate, the answer is, “It’s complicated.” One small part of the answer lies in a preference in Mexico for cacao lavado.
Studied and worked there in 1977. A 1957 Sputnik baby, Ghana always makes me think of '57 for freedom. This was an important story. The Brits got the gold, and the cocoa tree diseases in the 60's and 70's wreaked havoc on the economy.
People claim they care…but really just want cheap goods… would you pay a dollar more for a box of chocolates so workers can have a living wage and benefits ? Wouldn’t matter if you did …the companies would still just take the dollar. The system is stacked against working people…always has been and always will be… if the worker tries to change things they close the plants and move on to the next exploitable people… any person working 40 hours a week should have at least enough to be middle class… no working person deserves to be punished for the type of work they do… working people… all working people deserve respect.
@@777bigbird - It depends on who you buy your chocolate from. If it’s made by an industrial giant and sold in a box store I would agree with you. But carefully sourced beans purchased aby a craft chocolate maker? Am I willing to pay a lot more? ABSOLUTELY.
Well Hersheys is never going to do this because their shareholders would freak out and fire the CEO if they raised input costs for moral reasons. Such is the problem with capitalism and world trade.
One of my favorite makers in Jamaica is One One Chocolate. Do you know it? There are also some famous cocoa estates that are very popular among craft chocolate makers. Do you know Bachelor’s Hall?
These young women are wonderful role models for other young African or African-American women! I would love to taste a chocolate bar directly from the source. #57Chocolate
Modern chocolate is entirely dependent on maintaining a cold chain from the factory to the ultimate seller. It’s not easy to locate a chocolate factory in a country where the electric grid is not stable and the roads are in very poor condition.
@@nikosvault Who? I only buy chocolate that's not milk, and doesn't have soy or canola. If it's not sold locally, I'm not buying it either. You buy Tony's if you want it. I don't.
i feel we are so ignorant as consumers. ive heard eiropeans complain in latin america that their cocoa is better than anywhere in the world. but the raw materials of cocoa and vanilla are all from latin america and africa. i only recently learned about labor rights issues for farmers. i love chocolate bars that pay proper wages. i would love to support for the country that gives us so many riches in food. i didnt even know farmers have not eaten chocolate themselves. thank you so much for this education. we need to do better for farm workers of this world. lord knows i cant grow more than a few tomatoes and green onions for myself!
This is load of horse manure. By Ghanaian law, cacao has to be sold to the government cartel. It sets the price at which it will buy the cacao from farmer. Often the purchase price is sold at break even or below. The government then sells the cacao to foreigners at a set price. However, which foreigners is allowed to make purchase is determined by a bribe. Ghana is in need of sugar mills, cassava processing plants, mango and pineapple processing plants. There is less red-tape with these than cacao. There is no plant in Ghana current extracting oil from the mango oil. There is also a great need for portable electric generators in Ghana.
7:42 who’s a badass that can seed money some Africans to learn about European fine chocolatiers or Patisserie…. Because it is different than a bakery! Some people hand paint chocolates like artwork! She can find those supplies locally too.
My limited understanding is that in Guana children and adults are regularly sacrificed. Like daily. These being recorded and interviewed look terrified to be on camera. One can only wonder when the dominos fall for such exposure.
When I have to visit family in Butte, Montana, SO MANY people there eat Hershey’s MILK chocolate!! (YUCK). But the people there are VERY simple, and afraid to take risks, or chances……even with chocolate!! Those simple people in Butte sure are missing out on the GOOD chocolate! (as well as wonderful ethnic food! 🙄🤔🙄🤔).
I am probably one of the 10% who do not like chocolate so my conscious is clear regarding child labor. The middle man makes most of the money. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer or remain the same...poor.
They studied in the US, they learned the craft in the US, they used the money from the US, and then they bad mouth the US and label it. I’ll make sure I won’t buy 57 chocolate. I’ll buy Swiss and American.
This roughly nine-minute video published by CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday, November 7th starts out well enough, but goes off the rails at about 3:45 to become a commercial for Tony’s Chocolonely - so yes, this can be seen as greenwashing for the Tony’s Chocolonely brand over the last five or so minutes. I do have to say that nine minutes is not long enough to present any real nuanced exposition of the full situation and I am fairly confident that the producers and “reporters” did not have any background knowledge or experience from which to challenge the assertions the representative from Tony’s made. Also, while I am against both sidesing an argument, there was no alternative point of view. We heard from a small chocolate maker located in Ghana (57 Chocolate), some farmers, and the representative from Tony’s. It would have been nice to hear from someone like Terry Collingsworth of International Rights Advocates for their perspective. The story points out the challenges and Tony’s responses to them - but does not mention the symbiotic (parasitic?) relationship between Tony’s and Barry Callebaut, arguably one of the worst offenders when it comes to hindering meaningful change in the status quo. I completely disagree with the statement by Tony’s Head of Impact Paul Schoenmakers that the root cause of illegal labor and deforestation is poverty. Endemic poverty in the cocoa sector is a symptom, one cause of which is corporate greed (another is climate change brought about by deforestation). These are just two, logically inevitable, conclusions of an interdependent system of extractive agriculture, economic, and political policies. Take a look at the actual number of farming families Tony’s own 2022 annual report says they had a direct impact on. After more than a dozen years the actual impact is tiny by any measure you care to look at. SO - CBS Sunday Morning producers and hosts - if you truly want to do the subject actual justice, I can help point you to sources who can help educate you.
@davidholaday2817 Whatever, today in 2023, you need at least 10% Ecuadorian cacao in your chocolate in order to be classified as a fine chocolate and Pacari chocolate is the best in the world. Chocolate is not native to Africa.
The first archaeological evidence (based on work led by Dr Francisco Valdez) for the use and domestication of cacao is in Zamora-Chinchipe dating back to 3500 BCE, but there is not evidence that it was processed into anything we would recognize today as chocolate. I was in Guayaquil in October 2022 and had a chance to sit in on a presentation he gave at the National Chocolate Museum down on Panama St. Chocolate as we know it is a European invention based on incremental development over the course of many centuries, originating most likely in pre-Mayan Mesoamerica.
@@podsavechocolate Regardless, Cacao is from Ecuador and it was prepared in some form. It spread by trade thru the Valdivia Culture in Ecuador up into Mexico. My Great Grand father was a Cacao Baron when Ecuador dominated the World market. My Mom's Family in From Vinces, Ecuador. Once the capital of Cacao. My family still produce Today. They even have a eiffel tower there because everyone was so wealthy that they were all educated in Paris. Ecuador will Reign AgainSlowly making a comeback!! You can take the Cacao seed out of Ecuador but you will never have a Fine Aroma Cacao.
@@ELDecano1971 - I know Santiago personally - have for well over a decade. No one says they have the world’s second-best anything. I hear that Mexico has the best cocoa and chocolate. Belgium makes the best chocolate. I disagree with all of these generalizations. I think there are some things Pacari does well - but not everything better than every other chocolate maker on the planet. Chocolate is not native to Africa, but then neither is cocoa.
What was mentioned at the end of this piece, should have been highlighted more. Ghana has a very small dairy industry. Also, it doesn't have a native vanilla industry. Milk and vanilla, obviously, are important in the production of chocolate. Further, because Ghana is a tropical country, lecithin is going to be needed as a stabilizer. This is derived from soybeans. Ghana, also, doesn't have a native soybean industry. In addition, a refrigerated supply line is going to be needed, within Ghana, to transport it out; and then refrigerated ships or planes to transport it. In other words, many billions of dollars are going to be needed in investment. If I wanted to make chocolate in Ghana, I'd start with one of the fundamental problems of manufacturing and distribution, and not just producing chocolate. Why? Because a refrigerated supply chain, for instance, could be used for many purposed, not just chocolate.
But as you said, bringing in these new industries and kinds of manufacturing could cost millions and billions. I’m sure 57 chocolate may want to do that in the future, but they did what they could. They tackled a smaller problem instead of becoming overwhelmed and swallowed by the larger issue of many countries in Africa not having manufacturing and access to other necessary industries
you're so right, they should just give up and continue to let settler colonialists benefit from their crops! /s if people in the global north can figure out how to manufacture things that aren't native to our climate etc, then so can those countries south of the equator too. it's patronizing as hell for you to assume you know more about it than they might, considering they're experts in their field and native to the country - you're just some hack commenter.
Coffee farmers face the same situation, but it's global. Coffee farmers, selling to the the "C Market" earn less than coco farmers. Coffee cherry seeds (coffee beans) can be more difficult to harvest. A coffee farmer in Mexico can receive as little as 60 pesos MX per kg. Sometimes the anticipated price (C Market price) for a crop is so low that the farmer will abandon the entire crop losing the coffee trees too.
For context. 60 pesos is roughly US$ 3.35. A Ghanaian cocoa farmer is guaranteed just US$1.87/kg under a new policy announced by the president of Ghana. At the moment, the farmgate price is roughly 50% of the commodity price on the exchanges. There are similarities between cocoa and coffee, but the analogies can be taken only so far before they start to break down.
This is a pretty good commercial for Tony's and 57 chocolate. It makes me want to buy their chocolate because they seem like the good guys. But who knows what the true reality is.
The reality about Tony’s is very different from the rosy picture painted in this video. For example, they don’t manufacture the chocolate they sell. They do source the cocoa, but the chocolate is made by Barry Callebaut - arguably one of the worst offenders when it comes to perpetuating the conditions that leat to illegal labor and deforestation in cocoa in W Africa. Can we really pat Tony’s on the back when the company the rely on to produce their chocolate does not step up?
I love chocolate sooo much. How could I not support these efforts? They are not umpaloopas. They are children, that should be running jumping playing and learning! Love that Jane Pauly's top is the color of the chocolate fruit.
Had Tony’s Chocolate from a Whole Foods store, needless to say scrumptious. There’s no Whole Foods closer than 50 miles from me, but I’m going to buy it when I am able and when calories permit!
Just lowered While Foods delivery from $150 minimum to $100. I know doesn't help you, but maybe a neighborhood coop to Whole Foods from Next Door on line can be formed? Believe they ship also
Love 57 Chocolate, so happy for the Adison sisters. And indeed we must stop buying chocolates from companies exploiting child labor in cocoa farming in Ghana, CD and worldwide
A gentleman many years ago offered to.take me to Ghana. I was scared to leave my Country, the USA. People from Ghana are the nicest and most pleasant people around! When I hear that someone is from Ghana, I KNOW I'm with Good People. Brave People.
