The head of Original Beans advocates "replenishing while we consume"
"Standard chocolate is trapped in a vicious model," observes Philipp Kauffmann. "It builds on one of the most exploitative supply chains that exist. It practically enslaves the poorest people in the world, destroys rainforests at grand scale ? and results in a product that makes consumers obese." He pauses for dramatic effect. "And it tastes bad."
So Kauffmann set up his own chocolate company, Original Beans (originalbeans.com), sourcing cacao beans from some of the most important rainforest areas on earth, including Virunga National Park (the oldest nature reserve in Africa) and the Pacific rainforest of northwest Ecuador ? each "a rare, threatened ecology".
His chocolate has intense flavour and equally intense (ecological) ambition. Kauffmann, at heart a conservationist, is apt to show you photographs of slashed and burned forests in Congo. "Philosophically, carbon-neutral is not good enough. Our planet needs restoration," he says, "and since we are all consumers, we need to find ways to replenish while we consume. If we analyse the product lifecycle of chocolate, we can start balancing the ecological profit and loss, just like we do on the financial side of the business, and work towards net profit." Each bar sold subsidises a farmer to plant another tree.
Although he points out that Original Beans pays its small farmers 10 times the Fairtrade mark-up, this isn't fairtrade. "Consider this: of final chocolate quality, 50% is nature's input (variety, soil, biodiversity); 25% is added by the farmer (cultivation, harvest, fermentation, drying), and 25% is added in the factory (roasting, recipe, conching)," he says. "So if you want good-quality chocolate, it's not about fairness. Yes, the poorest of the poor people do work in the cacao chain, and Original Beans is allied with some of them. But this can't be about poverty, downtroddenness and consumer guilt. It's about paying for craftsmanship and quality. If farmers don't offer that, we don't work with them. We compare small cacao farmers to wine farmers, farmers who know how to get the best from nature. The world is urgently in need of their expertise."
Email Lucy at lucy.siegle@observer.co.uk or visit guardian.co.uk/profile/lucysiegle for all her articles in one place
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