CHOCOLATE COLOMBIA
Chocolate Colombia is located in the North of Antioquia department
In our last visit to Colombia, Summer 2022, we had the pleasure to visit our friends from Chocolate Colombia in the north of Antioquia. Chocolate Colombia, founded in 2014, is made up of over 9 peasant organizations and more than 1,200 cocoa families. They recently received the Fair Trade certification.
It is a business run 80% by women.
“Cocoa marked the moment where we began to transform our lives as peasants because we began the voluntary substitution of crops used for illegal purposes. We come from very difficult territories. There is a lot of violence. For us, cocoa opened a door to build peace on a daily basis,” says Diana Rodríguez cocoa farmer and Director of Chocolate Colombia.
At Ethical Origin, we are adding more value to the chocolate supply chain and combating cocoa's most important issues such as sustainability, transparency, traceability, living wages, deforestation and child labour.
Our co-founder Alejandro knows the region very well. He worked there on several human rights projects with local communities.
She is Gladys from ASOCAVAL, one of the associations from Chocolate Colombia. She is cultivating cocoa instead of coca:
“My motivation to work on cocoa was to get out of crops for illicit use […] for the good of my family, the environment, and the communities”.
The new report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said that the area growing coca in Colombia shot up 43 percent from 2020, to 204,000 hectares (500,000 acres) in 2021.
Addressing farmer poverty in cocoa is no easy feat. Big chocolate companies still facing modern slavery in their supply chains.
Modern slavery in the cocoa sector is still high, but also in crops used for illegal purposes, like coca to produce cocaine and fuel conflict in some areas in Colombia.
