Chocolate Research Paper

WOMEN STUDIES ECO-FOOTPRINT PROJECT Topic Cocoa Beans return Process Chocolate is a key ingredient in umteen foods such as milk shakes, candy bars, cookies and cereals. It is ranked as wizard of the near favourite flavours in North America and Europe. Despite its democraticity roughly race do not know the unique origin of this popular treat. Chocolate is a product that requires complex procedures to produce. The function involves harvesting drinking java, down coca to hot chocolate beans, and shipping the deep brown beans to the manufacturing factory for cleaning, coaching and grinding.These umber beans will whence be imported or exported to other countries and be transformed into contrasting types of chocolate products. Cocoa beans grow in countries exchange able Cote dIvoire, Ghana, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Malaysia, but the highest drinking chocolate producing country is Cote dIvoire. The takings process of chocolate beans embarrass first, coc oa is harvested manu onlyy. The seed pods of cocoa ar collected and the beans ar selected and hardened in piles. These cocoa beans ar then ready to be shipped to the shaper for performance.Cocoa grows in pods that sprout off the trunks and branches of cocoa trees. The pods know the shape and almost the size of football. The pods jump off out green and turn orange tree when they are ripe. When the pods are ripe they are harvested gently with machetes. Machines can misemploy the trees or the clusters of flowers and pods that grow on the trunk, so work oners have to harvest the pods by hand, using short, hooked blades mounted on long poles to reach the highest fruit. The cocoa seeds then undergo a process of fer handstation by placing them in large, shallow, heated trays or by covering them with large banana caters.If the humour is just, they may be simply heated by the sun. Workers mostly women conform to along periodically and stir them up so that all of the beans set tle out equally fermented. This process may head up to fiver or eight days. After fermentation, the cocoa seeds are dried out front they can be scooped into sacks and shipped to chocolate manufacturers. Farmers simply spread the fermented seeds on trays and leave them in the sun to dry. The drying process usually takes about a calendar week and results in seeds becoming reduced to about half of their original weight.During the occupation process, cranch is not equally divided amid men and women who work in the planation this brings us to the routine of gender division. The gender divide that exists on the cocoa plantation is that most farm work is conducted by men, although most certainly in that location are tasks where women are very(prenominal) active, such as scooping the beans from the already opened husks, turning the beans during the fermentation and drying process, and sewing the jute sacs needed for the promotion of the dried beans. Women in the farms normally te nd to the needs of the family.When female labor is hired during the harvesting time the wages given to them are not the same as those for men. Perhaps another reason why men are preferred is because of their assumed higher productivity rate compared to that of women. referable to different practices followed in individual regions, withal within countries, the government agencyicipation of women and their designate tasks vary enormously. For instance, because of the popular method of sun drying cocoa beans in Ecuador, it is inevitable to clean the beans. This job is mostly undertaken by women.This is not the case in Ghana or Brazil where sun drying is accomplished while defend the beans from foreign matters and waste. It is interesting to note however that there is no specialised pattern for the assignment of tasks to women, except during the harvest when the scooping of the beans from the opened pods is primarily performed by women in most cocoa producing countries. Given the great differences in the systems of occupation in producing countries it is difficult to recall a common percentage that reflects the modal(a) participation of the female work force.It is worth mentioning that unlike the coffee pastoral heavens, there are no associations or specific groups that house women yet involved in the cocoa sector at any level, although all associations and cooperatives are open to all who qualify. Due to fluctuation of cocoa prices in the reality market, farmers have no long-term security, and in some situations, they do not have enough funds to support their tillage business.Cocoa farmers are always faced with monetary hardship they are not able to provide for their families as they would want nor have enough funds to start up their own farming business because they only receive a fraction of the proceeds from the selling of the beans on the world market and there are many people in the trading chain. Cocoa farmers around the world face many chal lenges. It is estimated that about one-third of global cocoa crops are destroyed by pests and diseases every year. Many cocoa farmers have limited access to the latest agricultural technologies or methods of cultivation and a couple of(prenominal) of them ave business backgrounds to help them effectively market their products and manage their operations. Many of the farming communities live in poverty and are infected with diseases. Industry groups, governments and consumers widely distributed have raised concerns about the use of pesticides and child labor on West African cocoa farms. An interview conducted by Christophe Koffi showed that one major(ip) problem that women in cocoa production encounter is the lack the of financial capability or backing due to the fact that most of these women find themselves in a male dominated occupation.It is very difficult for them to just financial aid or loans to manage their farms. For instance, Women cannot inherit or even create a cocoa pl antation under our patriarch-dominated tradition, said Vanie, criticising what she called a backwards and misogynist practice (Koffi, 2008) because we still live in a patriarchal dominated society where women do not have the powerful to own lands and properties. This paper further talks about the sustanability in the production process of cocoa.We will be looking at Lindt& Sprunglis which is a family company and a major producer of chocolate and other cocoa products with a headquaters in Kilchberg, Switzerland. Lindt & Sprungli is one of the few chocolate makers that have bump off control over every step of the production chain start with the precise selection of the finest cocoa varieties from the best growing areas in the world right on through the careful and expert processing until termination with the elegant packaging.Lindt bunks its cocoa beans mostly from Ghana and Central and South America. Lindt has been very conservative in the amount of vigour its invests in the ch ocolate production process. Each existing and future facility and investment undergoes very small analysis to determine how much energy can be saved. through and through better insulation and energy recovery, Lindt & Sprungli was able to cut down on energy consumption by to a greater extent than than 13% per long ton produced between 2004 and 2010.The company intends to continue reducing the energy consumption rate per ton produced by an average over the coming years. According to the Lindt publication, The companys efforts since 1999, Lindt & Sprunglis Swiss subsidiary, Chocoladefabriken Lindt & Sprungli (Schweiz) AG, has been an active member of the Lake Zurich Energy Model aggroupThe Swiss government and independent engineers have audited the progress and as a result, the Swiss subsidiary has been granted the official certificate. Kilchberg, 2012) Since 2007, Lindt & Sprungli under water saving has been participating in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)Since then, the meas urements of water emissions and energy consumption have been largely based on the concept of the methodology Fossil Fuels set out in the CDP ProtocolWaste water, Lindt & Sprungli unceasingly monitors and analyses the use of water and the output of wastewater in the production process and intends to further reduce the use of fresh water in this process, which, in turn will impact the output of wastewater (Kilchberg, 2012) The major people that benefit from cocoa production are mostly the big corporations. The corporations performance cocoa farmers in the sense that they do not pay them the genuine worth of their bear on. Women who work on the farms are underpaid and marginalized. There is also the issue of child labor where children of school going age are laboured to work on the farms instead of going to school thereby denying them the right to education. The big corporations are not forth coming in let go of information as to how and where they get their cocoa beans from.Most of these African countries where these big corporations get their raw materials from do not have access to good roads, considerablyness care facilities, schools, electricity, and there is poverty in most of the communities. These big corporations vitiate the cocoa beans at a very cheap rate and then import them to the western society and the refined product is processed into different kinds of chocolates (e. g. chocolate drink, chocolate bars of different shapes and sizes and chocolate candies etc. ) which are sold consumers at exorbitant prices considering the price at which the cocoa beans are bought from the cocoa farmers. This explains how capitalism and big corporation exploit cheap labour. virtually everyone enjoys a bit of chocolate every now and again. But if you take a closer look at how cocoa is produced, it may well leave a bitter taste in your mouth.The conditions under which the cocoa farmers in many producer countries live and work are unreassuring Despite the fac t that cocoa is usually their main source of income, the families trial to make a living from it. Child labour is not uncommon. As consumers we can work with NGOs to find means of helping the farmers to adapt to pertly systems of cocoa farming that result higher yields, under socially more acceptable and environmentally friendly conditions, to meet market demands and hence reassure a stable flow income. As a major part of the global cocoa industry which has remained inactive and invisible for so long, consumers of chocolate can demonstrate that they want slavery in the cocoa sector stamped out, and your pressure can highlight their lack of get outment and make them more accountable.Finally all cocoa products, including chocolate, run the risk of being tainted by child labour and slavery. To achieve a satisfactory standard of ethical production in chocolate consumers must help to ensure that companies commit to credible and sufficient actions against such things as use of child labour and the exploitation of cocoa farmers and not make false and unsustainable promises to consumers of being slavery- eject. The consumers can liaise with government bodies and NGOs to negotiate fair prices for the purchase of cocoa products and this will in turn help the farmers to gain access to canonical social amenities of life. Reference Page Archer, D. (2012).ADMs commitment to sustainable cocoa. Milwaukee Copyright 2012 Archer Daniels Midland Company . Clarkson, T. (1998). Anti-slavery. Retrieved November 15, 2012, from www. antislavery. org http//www. antislavery. org/english/privacy_policy. aspx Kilchberg. (2012, April 22). The environment in the Production Process. Retrieved November 13, 2012, from www. Lindt. com http//www. lindt. com/swf/eng/company/social-responsibility/lindts-sustainable-cocoa-supply-chain/ Koffi, C. (2008, November 7). Ivory Coast women defy taboos. Retrieved November 11, 2012, from iol News http//www. iol. co. za/ word/africa/ivory-coast-women- defy-taboos-1. 423405