Chocolate Research Paper Essay Example for Free

Chocolate Research Paper EssayChocolate is a key ingredient in many an(prenominal) foods such as milk shakes, evictdy bars, cookies and cereals. It is ranked as unmatched of the approximately preferent flavours in North America and Europe. Despite its popularity most people do not know the singular origin of this popular treat. Chocolate is a output that requires complex procedures to produce. The offset involves harvesting umber, refining coca plant to coffee beans, and shipping the drinking coffee tree beans to the manufacturing factory for cleaning, coaching and grinding. These coffee beans will then be merchandise or exported to other countries and be transformed into different types of chocolate products. Cocoa beans grow in countries resembling Cote dIvoire, Ghana, Indonesia, Brazil, Nigeria, Cameroon, and Malaysia, but the highest cocoa producing country is Cote dIvoire. The mathematical product process of cocoa beans include first, cocoa is harvested manu e very last(predicate)y. The seed pods of cocoa ar collected and the beans atomic number 18 selected and placed in piles. These cocoa beans are then ready to be shipped to the manufacturer for proceeds.Cocoa grows in pods that sprout off the trunks and branches of cocoa trees. The pods have the shape and approximately the size of football. The pods start out green and magic spell orange when they are ripe. When the pods are ripe they are harvested gently with machetes. Machines can dam bestride the trees or the clusters of flowers and pods that grow on the trunk, so serveers have to harvest the pods by hand, using short, hooked blades mounted on long poles to reach the highest fruit. The cocoa seeds then at a lower placego a process of fermentation by placing them in large, shallow, heated trays or by covering them with large banana leaves.If the climate is right, they may be simply heated by the sun. Workers loosely women come along periodically and stir them up so that all of the beans come out equally fermented. This process may micturate up to five or eight days. After fermentation, the cocoa seeds are dried before 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 lift outs about a week and results in seeds becoming reduced to about half of their original weight.During the production process, labor is not equally divided between men and women who work in the planation this brings us to the telephone number 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 active, such as scooping the beans from the already unfastened husks, turning the beans during the fermentation and drying process, and sewing the jute sacs needed for the packaging of the dried beans. Women in the farms no rmally tend to the postulate of the family.When female labor is hired during the harvesting time the wages given to them are not the like as those for men. Perhaps another reason why men are preferred is because of their assumed high productivity rate compared to that of women. Due to different practices followed in individual regions, even within countries, the affair of women and their depute tasks vary enormously. For instance, because of the popular method of sun drying cocoa beans in Ecuador, it is necessary to clean the beans. This job is mostly on a lower floortaken by women.This is not the case in Ghana or Brazil where sun drying is accomplished go protecting the beans from foreign matters and waste. It is interesting to note however that there is no specific pattern for the appellative 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 capital differences in the systems of production in producing countries it is difficult to find a common percentage that reflects the average participation of the female work force.It is worth mentioning that unlike the coffee agricultural sector, there are no associations or specific groups that house women only 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 world market, farmers have no long-term security, and in some situations, they do not have enough funds to support their ground backing.Cocoa farmers are always faced with financial hardship they are not able to go forth for their families as they would want nor have enough funds to start up their own farming argumentation 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 drawing string. Cocoa farmers around the world face many ch allenges. 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 few of them have 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, brasss and consumers worldwide 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 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 secure financial attend to or loans to manage their farms. For instance, Women cannot inherit or even create a cocoa plantation under our patriarch- dominated tradition, said Vanie, criticising what she called a backwards and misogynist practice (Koffi, 2008) because we still live in a antiquated dominated society where women do not have the right to own lands and properties. This paper further negotiation about the sustanability in the production process of cocoa.We will be looking at Lindt Sprunglis which is a family fraternity 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 complete control over every step of the production chain starting 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 ending with the elegant packaging.Lindt gets its cocoa beans mostly from Ghana and rudimentary and South America. Lindt has been very conservative in the amount of susceptibility its invests in the chocolate production process. each existing and future facility and investment undergoes very detailed analysis to determine how much energy can be saved. Through better insulation and energy recovery, Lindt Sprungli was able to cut down on energy intake by more than 13% per ton produced between 2004 and 2010.The companion intends to continue cut 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 GroupThe 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 conservation has been participating in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)Since then, the measurements of water emissions and energy consumption have been l argely based on the concept of the Methodology Fossil Fuels set out in the CDP ProtocolWaste water, Lindt Sprungli continuously 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 encounter the output of wastewater (Kilchberg, 2012).The major people that benefit from cocoa production are mostly the outsize corporations. The corporations exploit cocoa farmers in the sense that they do not pay them the true worth of their labour. 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 forced to work on the farms instead of going to school thereby denying them the right to education. The braggy corporations are not forth coming in releasing information as to how and where they get their cocoa beans from.Most of these African countries where these big corporations get thei r raw materials from do not have access to trusty roads, health care facilities, schools, electricity, and there is poverty in most of the communities. These big corporations buy 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 interchange 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. Almost 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 hot taste in your mouth.The conditions under which the cocoa farmers in many producer countries live and work are worrying Despite the fact that cocoa is usually their main source of income, the families struggle to ma ke a living from it. Child labour is not uncommon. As consumers we can work with NGOs to find means of percentage the farmers to adapt to new systems of cocoa farming that result higher yields, under socially more gratifying and environmentally friendly conditions, to meet market demands and hence ensure 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 set off their lack of inscription 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- take over. 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 basic 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/news/africa/ivory-coast-women-defy-taboos-1. 423405.