Commenting on University of Reading student Maha Khan’s chocolate bar, made with 100% UK ingredients, Marina El-Hasni, Fairtrade Foundation Senior Sustainable Sourcing Manager for Cocoa says the story underlines a bigger challenge: 

“This British-made chocolate bar is a striking reminder that the future of much-loved foods like chocolate cannot be taken for granted. As Maha found out, chocolate is a really hard thing to make — and that is precisely why we cannot take the smallholder farmers overseas who grow cocoa for granted. Cocoa is highly sensitive to changes in temperature, rainfall, pests and disease, and climate change is already creating serious challenges for many of the farmers and communities who produce it.

That is why Fairtrade’s Fair on the Planet campaign is spotlighting the growing climate pressures facing farmers and workers overseas who produce some of the UK’s most loved products, including tea, coffee and chocolate. The campaign urges people to consider what is at stake if climate change and unfair pay continue — and why farmers on the frontline of the climate crisis need greater investment, fairer prices and stronger protection.

Cocoa farming supports rural economies across West Africa, Latin America and Asia, providing income for 5–6 million smallholders. Many already earn below the extreme poverty line while facing growing climate pressures and volatile global markets. They cannot be expected to absorb the costs of climate adaptation alone; they need to be paid a living income and supported to protect cocoa supplies, in all their varieties, from ever-threatening droughts and other climate impacts.

The campaign also taps into a wider debate about how the food and drink industry should respond to climate change. Companies must help protect the supplies they depend on, rather than simply extracting from them, and innovation should support farmers at the centre of the cocoa industry, not make them even more vulnerable.

Smallholder farmers including cocoa farmers produce more than a third of the world’s food and are key to climate adaptation, yet only a tiny share of global climate finance reaches them. Around four per cent of global climate finance is spent on food systems, and just 0.3 per cent goes to smallholder food producers in developing countries.

What matters here is fairness: for farmers, for consumers and for the planet. Fairtrade is calling for fair climate finance and strong laws to protect people and planet, because the people feeding and powering the global economy deserve protection, investment and justice in the face of climate change. We cannot afford more delay.

Fairtrade will continue to champion cocoa farmers’ rights and the value of responsibly grown cocoa. 

Ultimately, the future of chocolate depends on whether the farmers behind it are given the protection, investment and fair deal they deserve.”

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