Sustainability in practice: news from the chocolate industry

Much is said and written about SUSTAINABILITY these days. The term features prominently on the web pages of many big companies. Here's an example from the world's biggest chocolate company Mondelēz (formerly Kraft):

Making a Sustainable Difference in Our World

Sustainability is about preserving our world - land, air, water and people.  At Mondelēz International, our sustainability journey has put us on a path that is making a real difference. 

But, we can’t do everything. So we’re focusing on those areas where we can have the greatest impact and that means the most to our business performance. (1)

Hmm.

Number two of the world's chocolate companies, Mars, has even made a promise:
"Mars has pledged to certify 100% of its cocoa as sustainably produced by 2020." (2)

Other big chocolate companies like Ferrero (3) and Hershey (4) have now pledged the same.

That sounds good! But what does sustainable mean for these companies? Will the sustainability labelling be genuine or an attempt to mislead consumers (5)?

And where on earth do they want to get all this sustainably produced cocoa from? At the moment, the share of the organic and fair trade cocoa markets each stand at 0.5% of the total cocoa market, according to the International Cocoa Organization (6). A cocoa tree that is planted now will start bearing fruit in about 3-4 years, so there's not much time until 2020.

Millions of dollars are now pumped into sustainability projects. It's becoming a big market.

And the cocoa farmers? They get projects like being taught how to measure their farms using GPS devices (7) ... I am sure that they would prefer to get better prices for their cocoa. Even fair trade and organic cocoa beans are traded on the world market for as little as 1750 $ per ton (6). Of this money, the farmers get only a part with the remainder going to intermediate traders. So what would a typical cocoa farmer's income look like?

Two rough calculations

90% of the world's cocoa producers are small farmers (8). In Africa, a typical farm covers 2 to 5 hectares (8) and produces 300-400 kg of cocoa per hectare and year (9). Thus, a typical small farmer will produce 600-2000 kg, worth 1050-3500 $. Assuming that farmers get 50% of the world market price (with traders etc. getting the rest), each of them will receive 525-1750 $ per year or 44 - 146 $ per month. From this money, they have to spend a lot on farming (agricultural inputs, transport, etc.). So there's not much that remains to support a family, let alone to send the kids to school. Remember, this calculation is a fair trade scenario!

Like many of you, I love chocolate. For a great product like chocolate, I am willing to pay a higher price for the small farmers who produce the main ingredient of chocolate, cocoa. So let me calculate how much more a hundred grams of milk chocolate would cost me if we'd double the price of cocoa from 1.75 $ per kg to 3.5 $ per kg:

A typical milk chocolate has a cocoa content of about 30%. This means that with one kilogram of cocoa, 3 kilos of milk chocolate can be produced. A kilo of fair trade cocoa, which at the moment costs 1.75 $ per kg, can be used to produce 30 100g-bars of milk chocolate. Thus, only approximately 6 Cents of the price of a chocolate bar are for the cocoa. Doubling this would put another 6 Cents on top of the price of a 100g chocolate bar. No big difference for us consumers but a big difference for the farmer!

References

(1) http://www.mondelezinternational.com/deliciousworld/sustainability/index.aspx
(2) http://www.mars.com/global/brands/cocoa-sustainability/cocoa-sustainability-approach/certification.aspx
(3) http://www.confectionerynews.com/Regulation-Safety/Ferrero-promises-transparency-as-it-sets-2020-target-for-sustainable-cocoa
(4) http://www.confectionerynews.com/Markets/Hershey-stuns-critics-with-commitment-to-source-100-certified-cocoa-by-2020
(5) For one big certifyer, the Rainforest Alliance, defending itself, see http://www.confectionerynews.com/Regulation-Safety/We-do-not-mislead-consumers-says-Rainforest-Alliance
(6) http://www.icco.org/about-cocoa/chocolate-industry.html
(7) http://www.candyindustry.com/articles/85163-hershey-launches-gps-program--community-center--and-new-partnership-in-ghana
(8) http://worldcocoafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/Cocoa-Market-Update-as-of-3.20.2012.pdf
(9) http://seasofchange.net/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2012/04/05.04-SoC-cocoa-fact-sheet-final_cover1.pdf

Salam aleikum (peace be with you)!

As I am writing this entry, a young girl in Pakistan is fighting for her life. She was shot in the head by somebody who objected to her speaking out against the (Pakistani) Taliban.

While Malala is in critical condition and being treated in a military hospital, a storm has started in the media including the following contributions:

• At least 50 Islamic scholars have issued a Fatwa (Islamic ruling) declaring the attack on Malala as unislamic adding that the United States was the enemy of Islam and Pakistan
• A Jewish Press reporter in a contribution under the title "An Evil and Repugnant Ideology" comments on these "abnormal humans" who "are logically acting on ... Shari'a, Islamic law" and finishes his comment with the rethorical question "Do I need to add that this ideology is evil and repugnant?"
• Madonna dedicated a song to Malala during a show. Later, during the portion of the show where she performed a striptease, Madonna displayed the word “Malala” written on her back.

Using this sad case as an occasion to criticise one's old enemies or for a striptease...?!

I don't think that there's much need for another criticism of this act of violence. Instead, I would like to recommend you to have a look at the diary that Malala published in 2009. It gives a child's perspective on the situation in the Swat Valley in 2009 and includes some surprising statements about school from a young schoolgirl: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7834402.stm

Listen!

In the last months, I have had the opportunity to travel in some very biodiverse parts of the world. In fact, I have read the superlative "one of the most biodiverse places on earth" so often that I felt it is used quite inflationary. However, I am also aware of the fact that trying to measure the biodiversity of a specific place is a daunting task*. And of the fact that many people who care about biodiversity are at pains to point out what it means if biodiversity declines.

In this context, I have read (and listened into) the following article with great interest.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/03/bernie-krause-natural-world-recordings

I find the approach of listening to biodiversity quite inspiring. A few hours after reading the article, I tried to listen to how the city sounds from the flat of my host. And later today, when I walk in New York, I want to try to pay attention to the different soundscapes of different places.

-------------------------
* Just think about the challenges involved in defining and demarcating a specific 'place' (one square metre? one square kilometre? the whole ecosystem?).
And then you haven't even begun to think of the definition of 'biodiversity' etc. And once you have your definitions clear, imagine going out there on a really steep slope which is densely vegetated and try to find every single living organism (beside animals and plants not forgetting the bacteria and fungi above, on and below the ground). Really, it cannot be done! That is why researchers studying biodiversity have to use indicator species etc. which again gives rise to all kinds of uncertainties and further questions...

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and a warning from the Elder Brothers

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is a mountain range that contains the highest mountains of Colombia. Amongst others, it is unique in the world for having such high mountains (almost 6000 metres) so close to the coast. On some days, it is possible seeing the snowcovered peaks from a beach on the Caribean coast!

The Sierra Nevada is very special also with regard to culture. One of the indigenous people living there are the Kogi. Some Kogi can now been seen in villages and cities on the foot of the Sierra Nevada. However, a group of Kogi living in the higher parts of the mountain range have chosen to have no contact to the outside world.

The Kogi consider the Sierra Nevada to be the Heart of the Earth and themselves as the "Elder Brothers" responsible for it. In the last years, the Elder Brothers have noticed changes to the Heart of the Earth. Concerned, they broke their isolation and invited a film team from the BBC to transmit a message to us "Younger Brothers". The resulting documentary, "From the Heart of the World: The Elder Brothers' Warning" can be found on youtube.

Fe en la Causa

Colombia is such a diverse country and this entails that besides lots of things that I like here there are also some that I find harder to digest. One example for the latter are the recruitment and motivational videos for the the Colombian army and the war it wages. They are part of "Fe en la Causa", a media campaign by the Colombian armed forces.

Here's a few examples of such videos. The video that has been watched most is the one below. Even if you don't understand Spanish, you'll notice how intense the voice speaks to you telling you about heros and glorious troops. It also tells you about the need for "Fe en la Causa" (Faith in the Cause).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAXA1EHh2eE

The next video refers to some important dates in the history of Colombia, amongst others putting the Colombian Army in an uninterrupted tradition with a rebel force fighting the army of the established power (Simon Bolivar's troops in the struggle for Independence from Spain). When I watched it I thought that the rebel organisation FARC (who are fighting the Colombian Army) probably also claim to be the heirs of Simon Bolivar...


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA0pJZ4HRd8

For X-Mas with the Colombian armed forces click here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmtOVchbD0o

Different worlds in southern Colombia

From Popayan, a nice historic city in southern Colombia, I travelled east crossing the Sierra los Coconucos. To both sides of the road, vegetation was as dense as a wall.

 

It was very misty and the cloud forest looked pretty misterious.

No surprise that this strange landscape is inhabited by strange animals, too.

Even some of the public transport vehicles here looked unusual.

On the eastern side of the mountains, I arrived in another beautiful region, famous for its coffee ...

... but even more well-known as Colombia's main archeological site: San Agustín. The flagship remains of the ancient and mysterious culture of this place are huge stone statues and tombs.

I found some of the common household objects like pots, grinders, etc. (some of which are 3000 years old), that are on display in the site's great little museum, very interesting, too.

A few hour's drive north of San Agustín's cool, rainy and green landscape, ...

... I entered the Desierto de Tatacoa.

This tiny desert is famous for observing the stars. When I was there, the sky was cloudy however and I couldn't see many stars but instead enjoyed the beautiful changing light of sky and desert landscape.

A few hours further north, I arrived in Bogota, yet another completely different world with traffic jams, homeless people sleeping next to the main roads and modern skyrise buildings that are illuminated in different colors at night.

Some more fotos from Peru and Ecuador

After some blog entries without pictures, here are a few fotos from Peru and Ecuador to give an impression of the incredibly diversity of landscapes in these countries.

Mountain road in Peru

Different types of maize put out to dry in the sun

Mountain lake

Lima

My first glimps of the Pacific

Back on mountain roads

A village in the hills

In southern Ecuador

 Chimborazo vulcano

 Quito

A village on the Ecuadorian coast

Plastic Planet

At the moment, I am very interest in possible solutions to challenges facing life on Earth. However, there are some instances where I find it worthwile and necessary to take a step back and think about what these challenges/problems really are. Plastic is one of them.

Austrian filmmaker Werner Boote's great documentary Plastic Planet is available on DVD and you can also watch it online (in English and German) if you search for "plastic planet werner boote" on vimeo.com.

Puzzles

(English version below)

“Zu Anfang erscheint die Kunst des Puzzles als eine Schmalspurkunst, eine Kleinkunst, gänzlich in einer dürftigen Lehre der Gestalttheorie enthalten: die ins Auge gefaßte Sache – ob es sich um einen Akt der Wahrnehmung, einen ersten Versuch, ein physiologisches System oder in dem uns interessierenden Fall um ein Holzpuzzle handelt, ist keine Summe von Elementen, die man zuerst einmal aussondern und analysieren müßte, sondern eine Gesamtheit, das heißt eine Form, eine Struktur: das Element existiert nicht vor dem Ganzen, es ist weder gleichzeitiger noch älter, es sind nicht die Elemente, die das Ganze bestimmen, sondern das Ganze bestimmt die Elemente: die Kenntnis des Ganzen und seiner Gesetze, der Gesamtheit und ihrer Struktur könnte nicht aus der gesonderten Kenntnis der sie zusammensetzenden Teile abgeleitet werden: das heißt, daß man den Baustein eines Puzzles drei Tage lang ansehen und glauben kann, alles über seine Konfiguration und seine Farbe zu wissen, ohne auch nur im entferntesten weitergekommen zu sein: was zählt, ist allein die Möglichkeit, diesen Baustein mit anderen Bausteinen zu verbinden, und in dieser Hinsicht besteht eine gewisse Gemeinsamkeit zwischen der Kunst des Puzzles und der Kunst des Go; nur die zusammengefügten Teile erlangen die Eigenschaft der Lesbarkeit, bekommen einen Sinn: einzeln betrachtet hat der Baustein eines Puzzles keine Bedeutung; er ist nur eine unmögliche Frage, eine undurchsichtige Herausforderung; doch kaum ist es einem gelungen, ihn nach einigen Minuten der Versuche und der Irrtümer oder in einer ungewöhnlich inspirierten Halbminute mit einem seiner Nachbarn zu verbinden, verschwindet der Baustein, hört auf, als Baustein oder Einzelteil zu existieren: die gewaltige Schwierigkeit, die diesem Zusammenrücken vorausgegangen ist und die das Wort Puzzle – Rätsel – auf Englisch so treffend kennzeichnet, hat nicht nur keine Daseinsberichtigung mehr, sondern scheint nie eine gehabt zu haben, so sehr ist sie Selbstverständlichkeit geworden, die nun ebenfalls Ursache für Irrtum, Zögern, Verwirrung und Hoffen ist."

(Aus der Einleitung von Georges Perecs Das Leben. Gebrauchsanweisung)

"To begin with, the art of jigsaw puzzles seems of little substance, easily exhausted, wholly dealt with by a basic introduction to Gestalt: the perceived object — we may be dealing with a perceptual act, the acquisition of a skill, a physiological system, or, as in the present case, a wooden jigsaw puzzle — is not a sum of elements to be distinguished from each other and analysed discretely, but a pattern, that is to say a form, a structure: the element’s existence does not precede the existence of the whole, it comes neither before nor after it, for the parts do not determine the pattern, but the pattern determines the parts: knowledge of the pattern and of its laws, of the set and its structure, could not possibly be derived from discrete knowledge of the elements that compose it. That means that you can look at a piece of a puzzle for three whole days, you can believe that you know all there is to know about its colouring and shape, and be no further on than when you started. The only thing that counts is the ability to link this piece to other pieces, and in that sense the art of the jigsaw puzzle has something in common with the art of go. The pieces are readable, take on a sense, only when assembled; in isolation, a puzzle piece means nothing — just an impossible question, an opaque challenge. But as soon as you have succeeded, after minutes of trial and error, or after a prodigious half-second flash of inspiration, in fitting it into one of its neighbours, the piece disappears, ceases to exist as a piece. The intense difficulty preceding this link-up — which the English word puzzle indicates so well — not only loses its raison d’être, it seems never to have had any reason, so obvious does the solution appear. The two pieces so miraculously conjoined are henceforth one, which in its turn will be a source of error, hesitation, dismay, and expectation."

(From the Introduction to George Perec's Life: A User's Manual)

Camisea

In principle, it would be quite easy going down the river all the way to the Amazon via Iquitos, the world's largest city without road access, about 10 days downstream (as I had left some of my luggage in Cusco, that wasn't an option for me this time, however). The neighbouring villages of our destination, Kirigueti, had names like Nuevo Mundo (New World), Nueva Vida (New Life) and Nueva Luz (New Light) and I imagined us travelling deeper and deeper into a forgotten world of dense jungle with few and far-between villages inhabited by Indígenas.

The first surprise was that the villages weren't at all as far-between as I had expected.

Another surprise (even though I had heard about a gas project) were the huge and modern port facilities that we passed.

Wet and cold, we decided to get off at the next larger village rather than spending another two cold hours on the boat. This village happened to be Camisea.

It was the biggest surprise for me so far.

Rather than into an Indígena village with palmleaf-thatched huts hidden between trees, we walked on lawn through lines of wooden houses that had obviously been built very recently.

Beside the houses, infrastructure features included a big school, various administrative buildings, a hospital and a football ground. All of these seemed strangely unused.

To me, it looked like the Peruvian jungle version of a US-American suburb.

 

It took some time until we could make sense of it: as it happened, we had stumbled into the village on whose ground the gas field had been discovered. Some of the money (undoubtedly a pittance compared to the overall profits but still a lot of cash) had obviously been spent on turning Camisea into a model village. Complete with separate waste baskets for organic and inorganic waste and public toilets.

Contrary to what the guys on the boat had told us, there was no hostel in Camisea. After consulting the village chief, we were allowed to spend the night in one of the community buildings.

Walking through the illuminated village in the evening (to warm up before going to sleep), we discussed. Was this really as negative as it felt to us? Maybe was is what the people living in the region had chosen. But certainly not all of them. So who has the right to change peoples' lives in such a drastic way? And who, for that matter, has the right to deny them this change?

The only thing that seemed sure was that there's no going back!

Oil represents the sprits of a long dead world, is what the Shuar, a people from an oil-rich region of Amazonian Ecuador, say. Gas isn't much different.

El Pongo de Mainique

The pieces of information that I had gathered sounded almost too good to be true: a deep gorge where the Urubamba River breaks through the last mountain range before entering the Amazon Basin; very little tourism but nevertheless enough boats going down the river (thanks to a gas plant somewhere further downstream); wild; Michael Palin's favourite place in the world and on top of that one of the most biodiverse spots on the planet.

Together with Richard from Holland, whom I had met on the bus to Quillabamba, I was really looking forward to the boat trip down through the Pongo de Mainique. Besides us, about 10 Peruvian fellow travellers and quite a lot of luggage, the boat also carried a transport motorbike. Somehow strange considering that there were no roads where we were going.

About 20 minutes after setting off, a wave in one of the many rapids we passed through, hit the boat and we got drenched to the bones. Normally, this would have come as a welcome cooling shower. However, we had the dubious luck to experience one of the rare periods of surprisingly cold weather in the otherwise hot tropical climate of the region.

 As we approached the Pongo, we felt an increasing tension among our fellow passengers, the talks stopped and everybody looked ahead where steep mountain slopes appeared from the mist. When we entered into the Pongo, rain started pouring down. It was a very special and intense atmosphere!

I had expected a gorge with huge cliffs rising up to both sides. Instead, the rocks were only up to about 20 metres high, with waterfalls coming down to the left and to the right. Higher up, the walls were densely forested.

 

The fascinating ride lasted way too short for my taste and after a few kilometers, our small boat emerged from the Pongo. The river widened and calmed down, the passengers took up their conversations, somebody turned on a radio and we entered into the Amazon Basin.

(No, the guy next to Richard isn't dead, just sleeping...)

Through the Sacred Valley and down towards the Amazon Basin

Close to Cusco, the Sacred Valley hosts a lot of historic sites from Inca and Pre-Inca times. Looking at infrastructure features like terrassed mountain slopes, irrigation systems, settlements high up in the mountains, etc., I found it amazing to think that the hight of the Incas' power only lasted for about 100 years.

Also, I often asked myself what made them settle in the cold highlands rather than in the lush tropical regions or at least in parts that are a bit lower and thus warmer and easier to live and work in (constructing and working on terrasses in almost 4000 m altitude is really hard!). A traveller I met said that maybe, the Inca wanted to be close to the stars.

From the Sacred Valley, I continued to travel on a scenic road that crosses a 4000 m pass before descending towards the tropical lowlands.

Originally, I had intended to get off the bus in the town of Santa Maria and then make my way up to Machu Picchu. However, I enjoyed travelling this road so much that I stayed on board and continued driving all the way down to the city of Quillabamba where the tarmac road ends.

Following the Urubamba River further down the next day, the temperature got warmer and the land greener and greener.

Although the road continues a few km further, the last major stop of busses and taxis collectivos is the small town of Ivochote. From here, onward travel is by boat.

Ivochote has particular significance as the place from which vital supplies are delivered to the settlements downstream.