Plantation workers
Your only concern in the world is surviving day by day.
You have a family to feed, shelter and keep healthy.
You would also like to send your children to school.
Your mission is to ensure that people continue eating a
lot of chocolate so that you have a job!
To accomplish your mission you will be required to;
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Find out what life is like on a cacao bean plantation like yours in the Ivory Coast
Find out how well off you are compared to low paid British workers (involves some maths)
Find out about schooling on the Ivory Coast
Find out how your life compares with cacao growers in Ghana
Find out how much of the money from chocolate sales goes to the growers & how much to
other people (involves some maths)
Then you need to do this:
 Use your evidence to put together a convincing argument to persuade people to continue
eating chocolate provided that it is Fair Trade
Where can you find information?:
Your group has access to this information pack and a computer so that you can do extended
research
Plantation worker - KS3
Page 1
1. Find out what life is like on a cacao bean plantation like yours in the Ivory
Coast
The money you get for selling your beans is very low. You don’t earn enough to live a decent life.
Quick facts
•The cacao farmers are terribly poor.
•Cacao farmers are some of the poorest
people in the world and many of them earn on
average about £50 a year.
•Cacao farm workers don’t even have enough
money for proper food, medicine, clean water
or school for their children.
Child Slavery on the plantations
•Much of the world's cocoa is grown under
brutal working conditions, often by child
slaves.
•There are more than 15,000 child slaves
working on cacao farms in West Africa.
•They are sold by their parents, who are very
poor and are promised some of their
children’s earnings. Most of these parents
have had no education. But the people who buy
the children live off their earnings and send
nothing back to the parents.
•It is hard for chocolate manufacturers to
tell which cacao is grown by slaves and which
isn't.
•Probably about 40% of cacao is slave grown.
The lives of the cacao farmers and their children
Because the income from selling cacao beans is very low,
many grown-ups have left to go to the cities. Most people
working on cacao farms are the farmers and their own
children.
On the Ivory Coast, there are an estimated 130 000
children working on cacao plantations. Few children go to
school.
They work the same hours as the adults. Children often do
all the hard and dangerous jobs that the adults do.
The children spray hazardous pesticides without wearing
protective clothing. They clear undergrowth with machetes
(said “mah-shet-ees”) or long, sharp knives. They use
machetes to open cacao pods. Many children working on the
farms have untreated machete cuts. They transport very
heavy loads.
They can’t afford to have boots to protect their feet from
the scorpions that live among the cacao trees.
(information continued on next page)
Plantation worker - KS3
Page 2
1. Find out what life is like on a cacao bean plantation like yours in the Ivory
Coast (continued)
It’s very hard work to grow cacao – and very badly paid! You do NOT sell your beans at a Fair Trade Price.
No farmers on the Ivory Coast can sell at Fair Trade prices. The price you get changes but it is always VERY
low. Sometimes, you are cheated and get even less than the very low price.
What does Fair Trade mean? When farmers and labourers are paid a fair price for the products they
produce, that is "Fair Trade." Because they are paid a fair price, producers can avoid cost-cutting practices
that sacrifice quality and destroy the environment. For example, Fair Trade cacao is usually organic and shadegrown. Your cocoa is NOT shade grown. Fair Trade organisations also visit and check the farms every year, so
they can make sure workers are being treated well. No slavery is allowed.
Clear grown cacao
Ivory Coast cacao is grown by cutting down rainforest trees and planting only cacao plants. New cacao plants
take 3 to 5 years to mature and give a crop of beans. Cacao farmed like this has got rid of hundreds of
thousands of acres of rainforest. This is not good for the environment and it is very hard work for chocolate
farmers to clear new fields. Big companies find it cheaper to grow cocoa like this, even though they have to use
more pesticides (to kill the pests).
Shade grown cacao
Fair trade cacao (e.g. in Ghana) is shade grown. This is better for the environment. Instead of clearing the
forest, the cacao plants are grown under the canopy of other rainforest plants. Cacao plants do much better in
shade. It is their natural environment, and the small flies and midges that fertilize the plants like to live there on
the rainforest floor. Shade grown cacao resists disease better, so less pesticides have to be used. More types of
plants and animals can be found on an organic, shade-grown cacao farm than a deforested plantation. (It has more
biodiversity.)
Suggested tasks:
1. Make a poster to show how bad life is for you & your family
2. Make a poster to explain what Fair Trade is
3. Make a poster to compare the environmental effects of shade & clear grown cacao
Plantation worker - KS3 Page 3
2. Find out how well off you are compared to low paid British workers
How much do you earn each day growing
cocoa on the Ivory Coast?
An Ivory Coast cocoa farmer like you
typically produces 5 sacks of cocoa a year.
Last year, you were paid £51 for each sack.
How much money did you earn in that year?
How much did you earn each day?
How much do low paid British workers
earn in a day?
A British working day is usually 8 hours long.
The minimum wage in Britain is £6.50 per
hour
FACT FILE:
Some of these facts might be helpful.
FACT: The average UK family spends more on
chocolate in a year than a cocoa farmer earns in
a year!
FACT:
British people eat a lot of chocolate - 10kg for
each person for each year on average.
FACT:
If more people in Britain ate Fair Trade
chocolate, there would be real benefits for
cocoa farmers.
Suggested tasks:
1. Make a chart or diagram to compare your wages with those of British workers
Plantation worker - KS3 Page 4
3. Find out about schooling on the Ivory Coast
What are the schools like? Why do so few children go to school?
The Ivory Coast is the West African nation that produces half the world's cocoa
(cocoa is another word for cacao). Many children there are being kept out of school
to work in the cocoa plantations. Lots of then have untreated wounds on their legs,
where they have cut themselves with machetes.
"I used to go to school," said Marc Yao Kwame, who works with his brother Fabrice
on a remote farm. "But my father has no-one to work on the farm, so he took me
out of school. "My mother's a long way from here. I haven't seen her for 10 years
- since I was two years old." Many children like Marc and Fabrice still work on the
cocoa plantations.
At the village of Petit Yammousoukro, there is a project to take children off cocoa farms and send them
to school. The school in the picture was opened in January 2008. The building is at one end of the drydirt village square. It is a mud hut, with a straw roof and a gap in the wall for a window. It was built
by the villagers themselves. The wooden desks and a blackboard were paid for by an aid agency. There
are about 50 children in the school, aged from early teens down to three or four. All of them used to
farm cocoa. Many had scars from machete injury. All reacted with horror at the prospect of going back.
Chocolate manufacturers have known for years that thousands of children are put to work in appalling
conditions on the cocoa farms. They agreed to provide schools a long time ago. The person in charge
says that 40 schools should have been built by now, but so far, there are only six mud hut schools. He
has no money for more buildings, or for training staff, or for vehicles to take the children from the
plantations or places for the children to stay. “We don't have anything to make this project work, " he
says.
Suggested tasks:
1. Make a poster to explain how the lack of schools might affect your
children
Plantation worker - KS3 Page 5
4. Find out how your life compares with cacao growers in Ghana
Many Ghanaian farmers sell some of their crops to Fair Trade buyers.
This makes sure that they get a good price for their cocoa. It also makes
sure that the buyers weigh the beans fairly. As a result, these farmers
can afford to send their children to school, buy boots to protect their
feet and get good health care. They can also grow their cacao in the
shade of the forest canopy, which is better for the environment.
One group of Ghanaian farmers call themselves Kuapa Kakoo. They sell to
the Fair Trade chocolate market and get a fair price for their beans.
They also own 45% of a chocolate making company: ‘Divine Chocolate’. So
these farmers also get a 45% share of the profits. They are the only
cacao farmers in the world who do this. It gives them business knowledge
and experience and a real voice in the chocolate industry.
Not all Ghanaian farmers part own a
chocolate company. But many of
them can sell some of their crops at
a good price to other Fair Trade
buyers, including Cadbury.
The success of the Kuapa Kokoo
co-operative benefits the
community in Ghana a lot.
Now, all the children of the
Kuapa Kakoo farmers can go
to school.
This water well was paid for by
Kuapa Kokoo’s earnings from Fair
Trade cocoa sales.
Climate change is affecting farmers all over the tropics,
including Ghana and Ivory Coast. It makes farming more
difficult and crops unreliable as weather patterns change
over the world.
Suggested tasks:
1. Make a poster show the difference between your life & that of
cacao farmers in Ghana who sell to Fair Trade buyers
Plantation worker - KS3 Page 6
5. Find out how much of the money from chocolate sales goes to the growers &
how much to other people
Here are some facts about the chocolate market. You will be able to find more using your group’s computer.
It would help your presentation to show how unfairly the money from sales of chocolate is distributed. Use
the facts below and your ICT research to show just how unfair the system is.
FACT:
In 2009, the global chocolate market was
worth £43 billion. The global cacao market
was worth only £5 billion. (Cacao is the main
ingredient of chocolate, with sugar.)
Suggestion: Make a chart to compare the
value of the two markets mentioned above.
To do: Work out and show on a diagram:
In 2009, Kuapa Kokoo only sold 7,000 tonnes
on Fairtrade terms, out of a total of 35,672
tonnes they grew. What percentage of their
sales was sold on Fair Trade terms?
Suggestion: Show this on a diagram.
FACT:
Only 2p of a bar of chocolate costing £1 goes to the
cacao growers.
Suggestion: Show what proportion of the money goes to
the cacao farmers on a big diagram, chart or pie chart.
More things you could do:
Find out (or show how you estimated): what percentage of
world trade in cocoa is sold on Fair Trade terms?
In 2009, 3.6m tonnes of cocoa was produced globally.
FACT: In the UK, three companies share 70% of the
market: Cadbury’s, Mars and Nestle. Find out more and
make a pie chart to show this information.
FACT: There are hundreds of chocolate brands in the UK.
The biggest companies spend up to 10% of their profit
margins – tens of millions of pounds – on advertising and
promoting their chocolate brands. DISCUSS: Do you
think this is fair? (Give your reasons.)
Plantation worker - KS3 Page 7