Lent One: Embracing Hunger

My childhood faith tradition was dismissive of Lent and its practices. Why would God care if we gave up chocolate? Or fasted on certain days?

chocolate: André Karwath aka Aka 

When God led our family into a more liturgical congregation, we discovered the value of spiritual disciplines and the joy of a liturgical calendar. Lent is an essential part of both.

Lent offers a time to pause and review, to consider what we’ve been feeding ourselves, to examine the values that hold us most tightly.

Food seems like a small part of that, yet giving up even something as simple as chocolate can become a daily reminder.

For years I’ve given up sugar during Lent. That necessitates giving up chocolate, sweet desserts, sodas, even coffee. It forces me to read labels, rethink menus, and acknowledge, yet again, that for me “sweet” too often equates to nurture.

Giving up sugar, chocolate, Facebook, whatever the choice, is a good way to peel ourselves free from unhealthy patterns, and a way to remind ourselves that it’s okay to want and not have. We won’t die if we don’t feed every desire. In fact, deprivation of harmful desires is an essential first step toward health.

This year, though, I’m not giving up sugar.

I’m reaching toward something deeper, though still a bit unclear.

Lent points us back toward Jesus in the desert, in his forty days of fasting and prayer.

Temptation of Christ in the Desert, 12th Century France

And I’ve been praying about that first temptation: 

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.”

Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’  (Matthew 4:1-4). 

Set that beside Jesus’ statement, just days later: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.” Matthew 5:6.

What does it mean to live by more than bread alone?

How do I live in a way that is nourished more deeply by the daily word of God?

And here’s the question that’s been troubling me: what am I most hungry for?

Last week I wrote about confession, and shared the Ash Wednesday prayer from the Book of Common Prayer.

I’ve been pausing on the first section of that prayer, and puzzling over the realities of my own daily life:    

We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives,
We confess to you, Lord.

 Our self-indulgent appetites and ways, and our exploitation of other people,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our anger at our own frustration, and our envy of those more fortunate than ourselves,
We confess to you, Lord.

Our intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our dishonesty in daily life and work,
We confess to you, Lord. 

I reread some of that and think “Well, no, I’m not really that self-indulgent.”

Or “my love of goods and comforts is not nearly as intemperate as some people I could name.”

But that’s not the point.

In fact, to even begin that conversation suggests an inordinate hunger: for self-justification? Self-righteous vindication?

It occurs to me that our hunger, almost by definition, is focused on self: looking good to ourselves or others, feeling fed, nourished, comfortable, safe.

It’s all about us.  

And how could we help it, in a culture that tells us from morning to night that we’re worth it, that our every wish deserves to be met, that we should never have to wait for service, never take second-best, never sacrifice our own demands? Even our churches (some, not all) allow us to imagine that it’s all about us: music we like, sermons that “feed” us, God’s blessing for us and only us.

Even salvation: is salvation about a happy future for ourselves, or a healed and whole creation for us all? 

Is it all about me?

What do I really hunger for?

And what Lenten abstinence will free or satisfy?

I wrote two years ago about “hungering far past rightness": 

"Righteousness," to me, was a competitive activity, with a strong punitive edge.

 Who would hunger and thirst after that? And what would it mean to be satisfied?

Dig a bit, and it turns out the original Greek word used in Matthew’s gospel, “dikaios,” is the same as the Hebrew word "tzedakah", a word used throughout the Old Testament to describe the character of God and God’s restorative actions: justice, truth, compassion, kindness, making right, renewing, restoring, ensuring good things for those without, restraining the powerful, lifting up the weak, repairing ruined vineyards and fields, ensuring wise governance and an equitable economy.

We have no word that comes even close. 

As part of that post I attempted a paraphrase of Matthew 5:6-7 

 Your greatest joy, benefit, health, will come from trusting God’s plan, and doing your best to live it, without insisting on your own rights, your own needs, your own safety.

And your greatest joy, benefit, health will come not from simply wanting God’s plan in your own life, but longing to see it revealed in the world around you, in the health of creation, provision for the poor, restoration for those mistreated. As you long to see God’s goodness revealed, you will, in fact, have that longing fulfilled. 

Reading back over those words, I can see I missed some important elements, highlighted in commentaries that explicate this passage:

Hungry Children, Creative Commons Cate Turton
 Department for International Development

First, hunger: my knowledge of hunger is sadly lacking. I’ve never been in a situation where my very life is threatened by lack of food. I’ve skipped meals, even on occasion fasted for days, but there’s always been food nearby. The word “hunger,” as used by Jesus, would have meant something much deeper than I fully understand: a desperate longing. A craving that consumes all attention and directs every ounce of energy.  An overwhelming neediness waiting, and watching, for food.

Second: righteousness. There’s something going on in the forms of Jesus’ words that suggests an outcome both specific and complete, both immediate and in the future: “the whole object, and not a part of it”, “now in part, fully hereafter.”

The more I hunger for righteousness, the more I see the brokenness around me and realize that our brokenness is all part of the same shattered wholeness.

And the more I pray to see the world as God sees it, the more overwhelmed I am by the need, yet amazed at the glimpses of grace and great mercy. 

Puzzling over commentary highlights, I came across this:

St. Austin, wondering at the overflowing measure of God's Spirit in the Apostles' hearts, observes that the reason why they were so full of God was because they were so empty of his creatures. 'They were very full,' he says, 'because they were very empty'" (Anon., in Ford). 

Here is a mystery worth pursuing: how do we become so empty of ourselves that God’s fullness overflows?

And how do we grow past a superficial hunger to a craving for justice and righteousness so deep it reshapes our spending, reframes our conversation, redirects our every ounce of energy? My first task this Lent is to prayerfully track down the superficial hungers that distract me from the one great hunger: TV shows that have crept onto my schedule, trivial pursuits that have squeezed out better things, good things worth doing that have kept me from the best.

And then, the bigger, harder task: embrace the hunger that will never be fully satisfied, but that opens our eyes and hearts to the world's great need and daily draws us closer to the one who made and loves us all. 

"Ever filled and ever seeking, what they have they still desire,
Hunger there shall fret them never, nor satiety shall tire, -
Still enjoying whilst aspiring, in their joy they still aspire."
('Chronicles of the Schonberg-Cotta Family,' ch. 9,
 from the Latin Hymn of Peter Damiani, † 1072.) 

This is the second in a Lenten series.

Other Lenten posts:
    Ash Wednesday: Confession Booth, February 15

From 2013:

    An  Alternative Narrative: February 10

    Seeking Blessing in a Fracture Land: February 17

    The Poor in Spirit and Those Who Mourn: February 24

    Hungering Far Past "Rightness": March 3

    Guns, God, Mercy: March 10

    Making Peace: What God's Children Do:  March 24

    Where is Newness Needed? March 31

From 2012:

     Looking toward Lent
     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham
     Lenten Silence: Charash, Be Still
     Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb
     Lenten Submission: Rethinking Hupotassō     

     Lenten Song: Remembering Ranan 

How Much Does Justice Cost?

Let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like a mighty stream.

Martin Luther King quoted Amos 5:24 in his "I Have a Dream" speech, commemorated this past week on the 50th anniversary of the nistoric 1963 March on Washington, but he also quoted that passage in a speech during the Montgomery bus boycott, in his letter from Birmingham jail, in "How Should a Christian View Communism?", "On Vietnam," "Where Do We Go from Here?", "Our God is Marching On."

He quoted it again the night before he was assassinated, speaking in Memphis, Tennessee, in support of striking sanitation workers. Justice, to him, was rooted in scripture, and tied tightly to the just treatment of the poor, and of low-income workers here and around the world.

The book of Amos would be a good text to read on this Labor Day Sunday. Just nine chapters long, it provides a striking view of a period of expansive trade, growing division between rich and poor, oblivious consumption, disregard for the needs of workers.

Amos himself was a sheep herder and fig farmer. Like farmers today, he saw the way wealth and power concentrated into the hands of the few, while those who worked to create the wealth fell deeper into poverty. He also saw what happened when production of food gave way to production of profit.

Hear this, you who trample the needy
And do away with the poor of the land,
Saying
When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain,
And the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat?”
Skimping the measure,
Boosting the price
And cheating with dishonest scales,
Buying the poor with silver
And the needy for a pair of sandles,
Selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
 (Amos 8:4-6)

Spend even a little time looking at labor practices in today’s agricultural systems and Amos’ words jump to life.

How many workers are forced to labor far past a reasonable work week, for little pay, or worse, as bonded laborers?

I’ve posted before about slave labor and chocolate, but the practice of child slave labor reaches far past that one food product.

Coffee is the second most traded commodity world-wide after oil, and much of the world’s coffee is harvested by forced labor, often by children, some as young as five years old. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, child labor is part of coffee production in Colombia, Côte D’Ivoire, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Guinea, Honduras, El Salvador, Kenya, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, and Uganda.

When global coffee buyers push prices lower, small growers find themselves looking for ways to cut their costs, and forced child labor is a common strategy.

“In the past decade, the proportion of value added to coffee in the industrialized world has increased significantly. The share of producing countries’ earnings in the retail market decreased drastically by the early 2000s, to between 6% and 8% of the value of a coffee packet sold in a supermarket” (UNCTAD 2004). One of the root causes of forced and child labor in coffee is the low prices and lack of price stability for farmers.”

Amos, in his indictment of wealthy consumers, is rarely polite:

“Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
You women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
And say to your husbands, “bring us some drinks!”  (4:1)

Surely the women of Bashan knew little of the conditions of the poor supplying those drinks, just as we know little of the conditions of the poor growing and harvesting our coffee.

Apparently, for Amos at least, that was no excuse.

But what would it cost us to ensure a living wage?

“Farmers who participate in the Fair Trade program receive, as of 2012, a $0.20/lb premium on Fair Trade Coffee (Fair Trade USA). In return for this premium price, Fair Trade cooperatives adhere to a number of labor standards, including the prohibition of forced and child labor.” (Verité Fair Labor Worldwide)

Simple math: insistence on Fair Trade coffee should cost just 20 cents more per pound. Although, looking at the grocery shelf, the premium may be a little higher. And maybe a few minutes extra to look for the Fair Trade certification.  

But coffee and chocolate, grown in developing countries, are not the only food products where unfair labor practices abound.

Look closer to home: the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, begun in 1993 in Florida, has been working to raise awareness of bonded labor and unjust practices throughout the southeastern states, primarily in the harvesting of tomatoes. Their antislavery campaign has helped gain freedom for over 1200 workers held against their will in Florida. Kidnapped or tricked into captivity, many of them were locked at night in box trucks or sheds, sometimes chained, beaten if they tried to escape.

For thirty years, the wages of tomato workers held constant: 50 cents a bucket.  Buckets hold about 32 pounds, and until recently, workers were forced to pile the buckets high. The best the fastest pickers could earn was $75 a day.

The Coalition of Immokalee Workers has been promoting a Fair Food Campaign, attempting to raise tomato workers wages by one penny a pound, and instituting rules about fair measures, fair hours, and other worker protections.

Some corporations have signed on in support of the campaign.  Others refuse to pay the penny a pound difference. This summer, the CIW is asking help in convincing Giant, Stop and Shop, Kroger and Wendy’s that a penny a pound isn’t too much to ask in support of justice for workers.

A penny a pound.

Surely we can afford it?

But this issue of justice goes deeper still.

Not long ago I heard Wenonah Hauter, director of Food and Water Watch, speak about her new book Foodopoly. Concentration in the food industry puts pressure on small and midsize farmers, forcing many to sign contracts that increase their debt and decrease their profits, dictate conditions, narrow choice.

Just four companies (Kelloggs, ConAgras, Kraft and General Mills) control 80 percent of the cereal industry. Four companies control 83 percent of the beef packing industry, 85 percent of soybean processing, 66 percent of pork.  As of 2008, three companies (Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, and Bunge) controlled 90 percent of the global grain trade.

More than 60 percent of all poultry in the U.S. is now raised by growers locked into one-sided contracts that force the famers to take on risk and capital investment while leaving the distributors (Pilgrim’s Pride, Tyson, Purdue, Sanderson Farms) free to dictate terms, walk away from contracts at will, and dodge liability for pollution or disease. The farmer’s share of the price of chicken has been stuck at under 5 cents a pound for the last twenty-five years, while the distributors’ profits soar into the millions.

If growers in the U.S. are pressured and squeezed, forced into contracts that leave little room to move, how much greater is the pressure on small farmers in other parts of the world? How much greater the incentive to underpay workers, fall back on slave labor, ignore safety precautions, “sell the sweepings with the wheat”?

We live in a complicated world.

And we love easy.

But sometimes the cost of easy is too great.

Amos warned of the dangers of commodification, treating all of life as something for sale: land, time, justice, even people:

They sell the righeous for silver,
And the needy for a pair of sandals.
They tramploe on the heads of the poor
As upon the dust of the ground
And deny justice to the oppressed
(2:6-7)

He warned against worship of the idol of profit and the resultant disregard for compassion, mercy, wisdom, justice:

you have turned justice into poisonand the fruit of righteousness into bitterness (6:12)

Mistreatment of farmers and farm workers goes hand in hand with mistreatment of animals, of soil, of water. If the profit motive is the greatest good, then human health, environmental health, health of rural communities all become expendable.

What would it take to change this? What would it take to bring justice for farmers and farm workers, and along with that, better treatment of land, animals, human health?

Prayer.

Knowledge.

Pennies on the dollar.

Expenditure of time.

Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, asked:

“What single thing could change the U.S. food system, practically overnight? Widespread public awareness – of how this system operates and whom it benefits, how it harms consumers, how it mistreats animals and pollutes the land, how it corrupts public officials and intimidates the press, and most of all, how its power ultimately depends on a series of cheerful and ingenious lies.”

It’s time we understood, and spoke against, those “cheerful and ingenious lies.”

Here are some places to start:

Buy Fair Trade

Support the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’Fair Food Campaign: Take Action 

Support US farmers: Buy Fresh, Buy Local, Farm and Ranch Freedom

Learn more about food and justice: Harvesting Justice (a downloadable book about global food issues)

This is the third in a series on food and farming, Jesus' nature parables, and the intermingling of justice, sabbath, shalom, and the sweet, shared hope of God's green equity:

God's Green Equity: August 4, 2013

Seed Parables: August 11, 2013 

Miracle Seeds of Sorrow's Kingdom: August 25, 2013   

An Alternative Narrative

In the liturgical year of our secular religion, last Sunday was a high feast day, maybe the highest.

The Superbowl was the largest mass media event of the year, and the biggest social media event ever, generating over 30 million public tweets. Thirty second ads cost  $3.8 million each, and over 108 million people tuned in to watch the game, the ads, and the halftime show.

A new movement, MissRepresentation’s #NotBuyingIt, called attention to the extent that Superbowl ads objectify women and use women’s bodies in ways that demean and dehumanize women. 

Anti trafficking groups called attention to the sex trafficking that attends the Superbowl, which has been called  "the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States." 

Other groups discussed additional forms of slavery represented by the Superbowl: in the cheaply produced commemorative jerseys, the food, the materials used to produce our large-screen tvs. 

The Superbowl was both celebration and enactment of our prevailing religion of consumption, competition, violence, power. Some of the victims were painfully visible: the women objectified and dehumanized in demeaning ads, the players courting concussion-induced dementia.

Not My Life: 2012 documentary

But many of the victims are invisible, so far from sight we imagine they aren’t there: child slaves harvesting chocolate for our sweet valentines, adults and children trapped in systems of exploitation, trafficked illegally to harvest our tomatoes, cotton, coffee, sugar cane, or working long hours, six or seven days a week, to produce cheap goods for companies that drive the prices ever lower. 

We enjoy our convenience and comfort, working hard to ignore the mounting evidence that our current systems are unjust, unhealthy, unsustainable, and contribute to an industry of human suffering that dwarfs the slave trade of earlier centuries. 

In thinking and praying about where we are and where we’re headed, I came across Walter Brueggemann’s "Nineteen Counterscript Theses", presented at the 2004 Emergent Conference and published in The Christian Century in 2004. 

Points one to six:

1. "Everybody has a script. People live their lives by a script that is sometimes explicit but often implicit.

2. "We are scripted by a process of nurture, formation and socialization that might go under the rubric of liturgy. Some of the liturgy is intentional work, much of it is incidental; but all of it, especially for the young and especially for the family, involves modeling the way the world "really is." The script is inhaled along with every utterance and every gesture, because the script-bestowing community is engaged in the social construction of a distinct reality.

3. "The dominant script of both selves and communities in our society, for both liberals and conservatives, is the script of therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarism that permeates every dimension of our common life. §         I use the term therapeutic to refer to the assumption that there is a product or a treatment or a process to counteract every ache and pain and discomfort and trouble, so that life may be lived without inconvenience.

•  I use the term technological, following Jacques Ellul, to refer to the assumption that everything can be fixed and made right through human ingenuity; there is no issue so complex or so remote that it cannot he solved.
•  I say consumerist, because we live in a culture that believes that the whole world and all its resources are available to us without regard to the neighbor, that assumes more is better and that "if you want it, you need it." Thus there is now an advertisement that says: "It is not something you don’t need; it is just that you haven’t thought of it."
•  The militarism that pervades our society exists to protect and maintain the system and to deliver and guarantee all that is needed for therapeutic technological consumerism. This militarism occupies much of the church, much of the national budget and much of the research program of universities.
• It is difficult to imagine life in our society outside the reach of this script; it is everywhere reiterated and legitimated.

4.  "This script—enacted through advertising, propaganda and ideology, especially in the several liturgies of television—promises to make us safe and happy. . .

5.  "That script has failed. . . . We are not safe, and we are not happy. . .

6.  "Health depends, for society and for its members, on disengaging from and relinquishing the failed script.

The script Brueggemann describes is disturbingly visible in events like the Superbowl extravaganza. 

Sociology professor Michael Vos, exploring the theology of women, the body, consumption, violence, and control expressed in the Superbowl, asks:

"I wonder how we, as the people of God, might counternarrate the Super Bowl—this iconic event so disturbingly representative of what counts as sacred in our culture. In a way, our collective witness in the midst of this nation-defining event—the story we tell outside of church—is so much more important than the story we tell inside of church. For this outside story bears witness to our inside story. Will we imagine women in the way Doritos does? Will we pretend that we can simply mentally dismiss particular components of the Super Bowl "package" and in this way resist its hegemonic control? Or will we provide a compelling and alternative story about what it means to be image-bearers, in physical bodies, who live for a different sort of world." 

I just spent two days at a conference run by PASA, the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture. Surprisingly, the theme of narrative and counternarrative surfaced repeatedly in the main sessions, seminars, even side conversations: are we all commodities, or something more? Is land a resource to be consumed, or a gift to be renewed, a regenerative treasure? Is value measured best by dollars, or by moments of beauty, rich relationship, generous community?

Even more, the conversation turned, again and again, to this: our systems are broken. It all needs to change. And until it all changes, nothing changes. 

The season of Lent is an essential time for disengaging from the pervasive narrative we live in, and for envisioning an alternative narrative. The Israelites, unable to picture any world but Egypt, spent forty years in the wilderness, disengaging from the past, preparing for the future. Jesus, preparing for his ministry, spent forty days in the wilderness; confronted there with the narrative of power, comfort, and consumption, he affirmed an alternative, where power resides in God’s hands alone, where comfort is found in obedience, not self-protection, where spiritual nourishment precedes physical.

I’ve been feeling the need, more than ever, to find in Lent an occasion of examination, of disengagement from that "therapeutic, technological, consumerist militarist narrative" Brueggemann describes. My time at the PASA conference encouraged me further to undertake what Brueggemann suggests is the role of the church: "the steady, patient, intentional articulation of an alternative script that we testify will indeed make us safe and joyous."

My own church has been moving slowly through the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus' own articulation of that alternative script. While the Superbowl ads, game, half time show, insist that we will be happiest if we win, if we consume, if we look a certain way, drive a certain car, fulfill every need the moment we imagine it, the Beatitudes and passages following offer a stark alternative.

I want that alternative. 

I see, more and more clearly, where our current script leads: unhealthy food, unhealthy relationships, unhealthy environment, unhealthy minds, exploitation of child labor, of women’s bodies, of water and land, hardening of conscience as we excuse our own complicity in an abusive, immoral system.

My goal for Lent is to look for ways to extricate myself from the exploitative aspects of our economy and culture, to find out more about fair trade, fair farming, restorative justice, socially responsible investment

And to affirm that alternative script proclaimed and demonstrated by Jesus himself, a life-giving story in which the last become first, the leaders are servants, and those with least, those most burdened, most willing to face the brokenness around them, find themselves comforted, nourished, blessed.

Please join me in this exploration.  Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

This is the first in a series that will continue through Lent (February 13 to March 31). 

Chocolate Dreams

noukorama,Flickr Creative Commons

I love chocolate. Let me repeat – I LOVE chocolate. In all forms: candy bars, cocoa, cake, frosting.

Over the past fifty years I have bought a LOT of chocolate. I’m fairly sure my first personal purchase was a chocolate cupcake, at the bakery at Four Corners, our neighborhood shopping mecca. Every postcard I sent home from camp was smeared in chocolate – most likely the chocolate coating from the ice cream bars I bought every afternoon in the little camp canteen. My first gift from a boy was a whole box of Reeses miniature peanut butter cups –bought in that same camp store.

In all my purchases of chocolate – bagfuls to throw at youth retreats, bowlfuls to pass at planning seminars or youth group leaders’ meetings – I missed the memo about cocoa sourcing. I didn’t realize – until just last week – that most of our US chocolate is sourced from West African plantations where child labor is the norm, and child slavery is common.

I’m still a little stunned, I confess. I’ve been aware of human trafficking. I’ve been a strong supporter of Fair Trade. I’ve been buying my coffee from farmer’s cooperatives for years – and somehow missed the chocolate story.

In 2001, news reports in the US and UK called attention to child slavery on cocoa farms in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire . Downward pressure on cocoa prices had made it impossible for cocoa farmers to pay their employees; as a result, desperate farmers were using children to harvest crops. Children as young as six were being kidnapped, or sold, or lured into service with the unfulfilled promise that they would be given money at the end of their time of service.

Dark Side of Chocolate 2010

Under pressure from consumers, the major chocolate manufacturers agreed to the Harkin-Engel Protocol, a non-binding document that acknowledged the problem and outlined a plan to address it. The companies agreed that by 2002 they would create enforceable international standards and an independent monitoring system, and would provide funds for a foundation to research and share best practices. They also agreed that by 2005 there would be industry-wide standards of certification ensuring an end to child slavery and abuse of child labor.

A decade later, the protocol deadlines have passed, the cocoa producing regions of the world are even poorer than before, and child slavery has expanded. Last spring, ten years after the signing of the protocol, a study by Tulane University found that more than 1.8 million children in West Africa are involved in cultivating and harvesting cocoa. Estimates are that at a significant percentage of those are actual slaves – numbers range from 100 to 200 thousand. Few attend school. Most are involved in high risk activities, applying dangerous pesticides, carrying heavy loads that leave scarred backs, beaten with bicycle chains or coca branches when they fall behind..

The two largest US firms involved in slave-trade chocolate: Mars and Hersheys.

You know Mars: makers of M&M's, Snickers, Dove, Milky Way, Kudos, and a wide range of other foods and candies. Mars is still owned by the Mars family --  chairman John Franklyn Mars, VP Jacqueline Badger Mars, and former CEO Forrest Mars Jr. Together the Mars siblings are worth forty billion dollars, making their family one of the wealthiest in the world. How much of that wealth was at the expense of children working twelve or more hours a day, with no shoes, no school, little food, no pay?

CNN Chocolate Child Slaves 2010

While Mars has made only small moves toward monitoring cocoa sources for the chocolate they sell in the European Union (but not in the US), the Hershey company has done even less. Hershey is the largest supplier of chocolate in the US - Resse’s. Kisses. Nutrageous. 5th Avenue. Almond Joy. Caramello. Heath. Kit Kat. Mounds. Mr. Goodbar. Rolo. Symphony. Take5. York. Whatchamacallit. The list goes on and on. 


According to a 2011 report by the International Labor Rights Forum, Green America and Global Exchange, “Hershey remains a laggard in its industry on the important issue of child labor. Consumers, businesses, and legislators are increasingly embracing greater transparency and the reduction of labor abuses in supply chains. The most iconic chocolate company in the US … is the lone holdout.” 

Fortunately for chocolate lovers everywhere, there are alternatives, and from now on, I’ll be seeking them out. Equal Exchange has been working with small farmer cooperatives since 1986, and has moved increasingly into cocoa and chocolate production in the past ten years. Equal Exchange is itself worker owned and run, and encourages democratic decision making and shared best practices at every level of their supply chain.

Divine Chocolate is another bright spot in the world of chocolate. The company partners with Kuapa Kokoo, a cooperative of cocoa farmers from Ghana. All cocoa comes from the cooperative, ensuring the farmers fair prices, protection from price volatility, and a say in how the cocoa is produced and marketed.

There are other ethical chocolate companies working hard to treat farmers well and ensure fair wages and education for child workers while providing delicious chocolate. Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and any fair trade or natural food store will offer a selection.

But think for a minute: if you had forty billion dollars (the collective wealth of the Mars siblings), what would it take to change the lives of the children in your supply chain? In a country where a living wage is less than $2 a day, and annual salary is less than $700, it would take $70,000,000 to pay 100,000 children a generous wage. Add some schooling, throw in some shoes, and you won’t even notice it’s missing.  

Green America Chocolate Scorecard

All the big chocolate companies have made gestures toward addressing this problem. International watchdog groups say not nearly enough. The agreement was to have slave trade in chocolate solved years ago. The most recent Tulane report, overseen by the State Department, was that less than 3% of cocoa farmers in West Africa had any awareness at all of a move to address child labor.

Sometimes it feels like it takes too much work to live as an ethical consumer in a profit-mad world. Why should I have to research my chocolate before I eat it? Why should I need to debate pros and cons before I order a cup of hot cocoa? Does it matter where Wegman’s gets the cocoa in their chocolate cakes? What about the chocolate in brownie mix? Just thinking about it exhausts me.

But then I stop to think of the exhaustion of small children, lugging huge bags of cocoa pods on their backs. Of young boys, scaling trees with machetes, swinging tired arms, too often missing and hitting legs instead. Of hungry pre-teen girls, chopping away, day after day, at mountains of cocoa pods.

On the Slave Free Chocolate site, I came across this:

In Conclusion: Circumspectus Orbit. Look around you. If you accept that which you are aware is intrinsically wrong and have influence over, have you not contributed to its existence? You are what you do. . . Willful blindness will not buy divine absolution. That which is ignored will not cease to exist.  Closing one’s eyes serves only to feed the rabid, gaping maw of indifferent, self-serving greed, the continued existence of harsh injustice and the exponential growth of dehumanizing inequality; and in the process . . . makes us responsible accomplices.

That which is ignored will not cease to exist.

So, while I dream of a day when large corporations do the right thing, because they can, because people count more than profit, I’ll act in full knowledge that I do have influence, no matter how small, and I’ll use it on behalf of those children who have none.

I’ll sign the online petitions and campaigns.




I’ll look for Fair Trade chocolate (and cocoa, and brownie mix, and ice cream).

I'll try some creative ideas - like a Valentine's Day greeting on manufacturers' facebook pages,  reminding them that I can't eat their chocolate until they address their cocoa sourcing and pay cocoa farmers a fairer price.



And I’ll pray – for conviction where needed, for courage where needed, for freedom for the oppressed,  justice for the poor, fair prices for the farmer, slave-free delicious chocolate for us all. 


As always, comments, ideas, suggestions are welcome. Click on the _comments line below for the comment box to appear.