19 Aug Keswick Agricultural Show 2019
Keswick and District Fair Trade Campaign will have a presence in a tent at the Keswick Agricultural Show on Monday August 26th.
We will be focusing on chocolate in our displays and information. Despite the world’s love for chocolate, it is a precarious way of making a living. Although there is a high demand for cocoa, the global price for cocoa has fluctuated wildly in recent decades as a result of weather events. Between 2016 and 2017 global cocoa prices dropped by more than a third. Ninety per cent of the world’s cocoa is grown on small family farms by about 6 million farmers who earn their living from growing and selling cocoa beans. Although cocoa is always in demand, prices can move up and down very fast, leaving cocoa farmers unable to plan for the future. Add in the uncertainty of the effects of climate change – disease, pests, natural disasters – and there’s a lot cocoa farmers are up against. Only a small percentage of the world’s cocoa is Fairtrade, so we need to do more to work with cocoa farmers to achieve big change. Fairtrade is scaling up its work, looking for new ways to reach more cocoa farming communities and ensure more cocoa farmers get a better deal, through partnerships such as Cocoa Life with Cadbury.
Simply growing more cocoa and getting a better price for it isn’t the final answer to tackling the inequalities in the cocoa supply chain. That’s why Fairtrade is using its expertise to enable cocoa farmers to tackle climate change.