Co-op chooses Fairtrade cocoa for all its chocolate

The Co-op is to make all its own brand chocolate bars from Fairtrade cocoa in an effort to give west African producers a stable income and bring fair trade into the mainstream. The supermarket chain has struck a deal with a co-operative of small farmers in Ghana to supply it with cocoa in return for a guaranteed fair price that will cover the cost of production and provide them with a basic living wage.

Terry Hudghton, Co-op's head of branding, said the company had chosen to focus on chocolate for a campaign to make trade fairer because of "the obscene contrast between the pleasure derived from eating it and the suffering that often goes into supplying its main ingredient".

Cocoa prices can fluctuate wildly on the world commodity markets as traders speculate on the size of the harvest, leaving many small African farmers exposed to collapsing incomes and extreme poverty. West African growers living in remote forest villages supply almost 70% of the world's cocoa beans.

Last year the multinational chocolate manufacturers, which account for about 80% of the UK's chocolate market, came under fire when the use of child slave labour was exposed on west Africa plantations. Fairtrade is an independent mark which guarantees that producers of raw materials will be paid enough to live on, whatever the prices on the commodity markets.

The price of cocoa beans is currently $900-$1,000 a tonne on the world markets. It recently rose to a peak of $2,300.

Fairtrade pays a guaranteed minimum of $1,600 per tonne, which is what it calculates is the cost of growing the beans plus a reasonable wage. It also pays a premium of $150 per tonne into a cooperative for community projects to help villagers build wells for clean water, schools and health centres.