Comfort Brings Chocolate

Bath chocolate lovers had the chance to share their passion with the farmers who grow the cocoa beans.

Comfort Kumeah and Mary Antwinyamekye, two Fairtrade cocoa farmers from Ghana, came to the city as part of a Fairtrade producer tour to celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight 2002 with one of their aims being to persuade people to eat more Fairtrade chocolate.

The meeting was arranged by the Bath Trade Justice Movement and was well attended at Friends' Meeting House in Bath.

The two women discussed their experience of working for the cooperative and shared the fruits of their labour in a chocolate-tasting session Comfort and Mary are from Kuapa Kokoo cocoa farmers' co-operative in Ghana. where Fairtrade cocoa is grown for The Day Chocolate Company's chocolate bars, Divine and Dubble.

In a first for fair trade, Kuapa Kokoo owns shares in The Day Chocolate Company so the farmers have a real say in how Divine and Dubble are produced as well as a share in any profits.

The co-operative has grown from a few hundred farmers nine years ago, when it was first formed, to more than 35,000 farmers today.

The average Briton spends more than ?50 a year on chocolate - the same amount that most cocoa growers earn in a year, yet many farmers have never even tasted chocolate.

Fairtrade also pays a social premium on top of the fixed price, in this case the extra money goes into a trust fund run by the farmers' co-operative.

The money is used for projects such as building new schools and ensuring all the villages have access to clean water and sanitation, this way the whole community benefits.

There will be Fairtrade stalls in supermarkets around Bath tomorrow where people will be invited to taste Fairtrade food and drink.

The next Bath Trade Justice Movement meeting is on April 8 at 7.30pm at Envolve, anyone is welcome to attend.

The national Trade Justice Movement will also be holding a rally to lobby parliament on trade issues on June 19 in London.