WASHINGTON -- Cargill Inc. CEO Greg Page never used the words "child labor" in the 30-minute keynote address he delivered recently to the World Cocoa Foundation. Instead, he talked at length about "sustainability."
That term has become code for big cocoa players like Cargill that are trying to stop child labor abuses on cocoa farms, while keeping production of a lucrative foodstuff viable.
Government and media reports of kids forced to drop out of school -- or worse, abducted and made to work without pay -- have dogged the cocoa industry for more than a decade. Surveys by Tulane University researchers have documented many corporate-backed attempts to alleviate child labor issues. But those efforts have fallen well short of key goals, while hordes of children continue working on cocoa farms, some in unsafe conditions.
Cargill says solutions to child labor abuses lie in making cocoa farming more productive and profitable, then working from the inside to convince farmers and governments that they would be better off educating children than exploiting them. Protecting children's rights is a tenet of Cargill's "Cocoa Promise," a cocoa playbook of sorts that the firm unveiled in November.
Its overarching concept is "sustainability," the word Page used often at the cocoa confab.
ADVERTISEMENT
What exactly is sustainability? "One of the simplest definitions that I have heard and one that we have used for Cargill ... is to meet today's needs without impairing the world's capacity to serve future generations," Page says.
Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa thinks Minnetonka, Minn.-based Cargill and its big cocoa compatriots -- Archer Daniels Midland, Mars, Nestle, Hershey and others -- are only partway there. Harkin was behind a 2001 congressional action, the Harkin-Engel Protocol, that has put heat on the cocoa and chocolate companies.
"While progress has been made in combating child labor in the cocoa sector since the Harkin-Engel Protocol was signed in 2001, it has not come quickly enough," Harkin says.
On the plus side, the cocoa industry committed $10 million for remediation efforts as part of a 2010 agreement among the cocoa industry, the U.S. Department of Labor and governments of the world's two largest cocoa producers, Ivory Coast and Ghana.
"To its credit, the industry as a whole, including Cargill, has met this financial commitment," Harkin says. But given the scope of the child labor problem, more investments are needed, he adds. And while companies associated with major chocolate brands have been at the forefront of the industry's efforts, "the companies that process cocoa, such as Cargill and ADM, have been less engaged."
Archer Daniels Midland, the Decatur, Ill.-based agribusiness giant, said in a statement that it is "committed to responsible cocoa production throughout the world ... We actively develop, support and fund several programs to help eliminate the worst forms of child labor."
Leading the fight
Cargill officials say the company is among the industry's leading investors in the child labor fight. Cargill has spent $5 million in the past three years in Ivory Coast and Ghana on a program designed to end child labor abuse, says Taco Terheijden, Cargill's sustainable cocoa manager. And Cargill should soon announce a three-year extension of that initiative, which operates in partnership with CARE International.
ADVERTISEMENT
But progress will continue to be "incremental," Terheijden says, because Cargill's program "is based on empowering communities so they can take control of their own future." Job One has been increasing productivity to attack the poverty that forces children to leave school to work on cocoa farms, he says.
About 70 percent of the world's cocoa production comes from West Africa. Unlike many types of farming -- from corn in the U.S. Midwest to palm oil in Southeast Asia -- cocoa growing is dominated by relatively small farms. An estimated 1.8 million children work on cocoa farms in Ivory Coast and Ghana combined.
Companies like Cargill buy cocoa from farmers -- based on commodity market prices -- and process it into cocoa butter and chocolate liquor. Cargill trades cocoa and sells some processed cocoa to chocolate makers. But it's also a major producer itself.
Child labor practices in the cocoa industry came under scrutiny around 2000 after media exposes about child trafficking and slave labor. In response, Harkin and Rep. Eliot Engel of New York negotiated with governments, nonprofit groups and the world's largest cocoa and chocolate companies, including Cargill.
The result was the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a voluntary agreement aimed at stopping the "worst forms of child labor."
