A persuasive essay to convince people to buy Fair-trade Chocolate

It's a sweltering hot day, and as you reach for your first bite of pure, brown, creamy luxury, you wonder briefly where it came from. But as the glorious tastes and textures fill your senses, you forget all about it. You might forget, but the slave child in the Ivory Coast doesn't.

How much do you know about where chocolate comes from? Cocoa plants are grown on small independent farms, whose farmers suffer every time the world prices slump. Either the beans come from these small, poor farms in Ghana or from large plantations in Latin America, which are run by large multinational companies. The cocoa beans are bought from the farmers for a very low price- depending on the world prices. The amount of money paid is barely enough for the farmers to buy enough food to last their family throughout the day, never mind pay for schooling for his children, who will be illiterate and destined to befall their parents, or a worse fate. Because world prices are so unpredictable, the farmers can't plan anything long-term and are often in debt. The companies who buy the cocoa like "Hershey's" and "M&Ms/Mars" could easily afford to pay a little extra to help the farmers and their families attain a better standard of living. These companies instead decided to buy the cheapest cocoa they can find, in order to increase the already huge profits that they enjoy daily. Although these companies enjoy huge profits, the farmers who produce the cocoa can expect to earn less for their product than it costs to make. These people are forced, by our greed, to work for nothing. In fact, they actually work for less than nothing, because to grow their produce they have to spend more than they receive.

Almost half of the worlds cocoa (therefore, half of the worlds chocolate) comes from the Ivory Coast, near Ghana. The farmers here sell their cocoa for a very small amount. As a whole, We, Europe thought that the slave trade had been abolished in the early 1800's. We are now discovering that this is in fact not true. On roughly 90% of the cocoa farms in the Ivory Coast there is some form of child slavery going on. The children start work aged around 3, they are often bought from their parents for around £10. The child slave traffickers then re-sell the children for around £200, making, in the process a tidy profit for themselves. The slaves sold in 1850 were sold for almost three times the price these children are sold for today. The reason for this is that since 1850 the population has tripled (mainly in countries like Africa and Ghana) which has meant that people who make a living trafficking slaves have had a rich choice. The dramatic population increase has also made those countries poorer. Combined, this led to a decrease in slave prices. These children are moved to the Ivory Coast from poorer countries, generally by boat. The MV Etireno is thought to have transported child slaves for at least 5 years. The journey itself is bad enough, with the children arriving half-starved, malnourished and unknown. Once the children are sold they become nameless, faceless things. They are no longer humans, but objects that are only around to follow orders. Since the children are so cheap they become dispensable and so their "owners" treat them as such. All the child slaves live in constant terror of being abused, both sexually and physically either by their owners or, if they haven't made enough money, by people in the streets, while they try to earn enough to go back to their owners house. This modern slave trade isn't even kept secret. When women go out to the market, it is common practise for them to be going out shopping for a new slave at the same time. Whilst the slave's are out with their owners, some are forced to call the older woman "Auntie" so that they wouldn't be recognised as slaves. The children are forced to work between 14 and 18 hours per day, with little rest or food in between. They have to carry loads of about 30kg for anything up to 25km every day. This hard manual work of transporting cocoa beans (often carrying the bags on their heads) can very easily leave the children disfigured for the rest of their short, misery-filled lives.

How can you help improve the lives of these poor children? There is one very simple answer to that, Fair-Trade. You could decide to boycott chocolate altogether but where would that leave you? Hungry. By choosing to buy Fair-Trade chocolate you will have an absolute guarantee that at no point, from the picking of the beans, throughout the production of the chocolate, to your moments of pleasure, was a slave used. This will do more to help the poorest people in the world provide for their own families than the boycott of chocolate in general could ever do. The Fair-Trade Foundation is a completely independent organisation that awards the Fair- Trade mark to products that have been made in accordance to the scrupulous regulations and standards that are set and upheld by the Foundation. The running of the Foundation is helped by a grant from Christian Aid. Christian Aid also helps the Foundation's work by campaigning for supermarkets to stock a wide variety of Fair-Trade goods. Fair-Trade are also campaigning for an internationally agreed set of standards and rules concerning the way 3rd world countries and producers are treated by the big multinational companies. Fair-Trade gives farmers a better deal because it has a set lowest price for its products, so that no matter how low the world price goes, the farmers that Fair-Trade buy from have a guaranteed income that will support them and allow them to look after their own children. When the world prices rise the farmers can still expect to get the full price for their beans, so that unlike their counter-parts that use slavery, they have a safety net. Fair-Trade products are now stocked in many chains of leading supermarkets, and there is a very wide range of products, not only chocolate.

Imagine the same sweltering hot day, only this time you are not reaching for a bite of chocolate, but for a cocoa bean. Your hand slips and some beans spill onto the ground in front of you. You don't bite into chocolate; instead you feel the bite of the whip on your back. Against the pain, and the tears, you have to keep going, unless you want another taste of what it takes to make some unknown person's heaven. Hell, is what it takes. It's your choice.