Words from a chocolate maker

by Duffy Sheardown, Chocolate Maker, Duffy’s Chocolate

Foreword by Ben Rawlings, Head of Economic and Sustainable Development at the British Embassy in Lima

As far as we know, chocolate was discovered in Central America three to four thousand years ago, and was brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus when he landed on Guanaja, an island off Honduras, in 1502.  But the Europeans – like the Olmecs, the Maya and the Aztecs before them – consumed chocolate as a drink.  It was only in the 18th and 19th Century that chocolate began appearing as a bar, to be eaten.

Three of the great Quakers in Britain – George Cadbury, Joseph Rowntree and Joseph Storrs Fry – built successful cocoa and chocolate companies which still bear their names today.  But they weren’t only focused on commercial success: all three were committed to making a positive social impact, revolutionising working conditions and rewarding their workers with a better quality of life in and out of the workplace. 

Last week the UK celebrated Chocolate Week (where most of the history lesson above comes from!).  To commemorate this we have a guest blog from Duffy Sheardown, an entrepreneurial British chocolate maker who in just five years has turned an idea he had whilst listening to a radio show into a small business making award-winning fine chocolate.  He uses cocoa beans from across Latin America and, as he explains, is also committed to ensuring cocoa producers get a fair deal for their product.

I started making chocolate 5 years ago and have been doing it commercially for 4 years.  I’ve faced a few challenges but things are gradually changing both for the business and for the community that we are selling chocolate into.  The original aim was to make the best chocolate in the world and to try and make sure that the cocoa farmers got a fairer deal out of it.

I make chocolate bars from fine-flavour cocoa beans.  Each of my varieties is single-origin – that is, made with beans from one country.  Usually it is with beans from one farmer or grower.  We import the beans, roast them, remove the husks, and put them in a granite grinder for three days with some cane sugar and under some heat.  A day to mould each of these 30kg batches and another to hand-wrap each bar and we have about 300 chocolate bars that we can sell to the public. I can produce 2 batches per week.  This is slow food.

Where possible, we buy direct from the farmer.  There are still some farmers in some countries that avoid the high-yield “bulk” cacao varieties and grow the rarer, slower-growing and lower-yielding but much more complex tasting ones.  I try and find these beans and pay at least three times the usual price for them.  Most cocoa beans (about 95%) are sold into the bulk market and are sold purely by weight.  I need to find some of the remaining 5% and I buy purely for taste.

I buy expensive beans and in small quantities – usually 500kg per type of bean per year. Finding them is hard, buying them is expensive, and shipping them is hard and expensive.  Moving a container with 10 tonnes in is the usual and easier way – and cheaper per kg.  I buy one pallet of beans at a time.

As a small company (yet to turn a profit) I cannot visit each farmer to check their farming methods; I have to give them my trust.  I trust that the price I pay means they will continue to grow fine beans and not dig the trees up and plant for lucrative palm oil – or drugs.  I hope that I pay enough that they can afford to send their kids to school, or to be ill occasionally.  I talk to them and ask if they treat their workers fairly, use pesticides and so forth but can’t afford to visit and check.

It seems that the Fairtrade model isn’t a great one when it comes to growing cacao.  The price differential is very small as most farmers grow very small quantities.  The inspection methods are expensive for the farmer and many parts of the trading chain make more from the price increase than the farmer does.

We’ve set up an organisation called Direct Cacao as an alternative.  It aims to encourage cacao farmers to grow “fine” beans, chocolate makers to pay extra for these fine beans and chocolatiers to make some of their truffles and so on from Direct Cacao chocolate.  We are still in the early stages but we have some farmers on board and some extremely talented small and medium size chocolate makers, as well as other industry professionals.  Cutting out the middle men is a quick way of putting more of the value of the cocoa beans with the farmer.  Direct Cacao also has a remit to educate the public about fine chocolate so hopefully the label itself will generate growth in the fine cacao/fine chocolate market.

We aim to offer help and encouragement to small farmers to start or continue growing fine beans.  As we already have members from every section of the growing/processing/selling/promoting chain on board we can offer guidance and education where needed.  At present the “fine” segment of world chocolate sales is around 1-2%, compared to around 30% fine wine sold for example.  We should be able to expand this “fine” segment and ensure that small farmers can benefit through growing a sustainable crop with long-term

We need help in educating the public; we need help finding the fine cacao trees and the farmers who are growing them.  We need help to show small farmers that fine cacao is a crop with a growing market that can be sold at a premium that can make a real difference to their living conditions.