Clay have you tried directing your question / concerns to FLO-CERT to find if it's them and what's going on? If you can provide a copy of the paper I'll be happy to contact them if your not interested. I expect there is some simple explanation or that there is a problem that needs it's public profile raising.
Certainly in my limited experience it's often NGO's / Aid agencies who set up these co-ops and certification systems, but it looks like someone has stuffed up big time. IMO those charges on farmers are probititive to useful outcomes.
Dear Clay,
I think you're right, Fair Trade will not adapt itself to the new reality of higher commodity prices, and indeed it is even questionable if the FT minimum price level covers the real cost of production. This level was set in the beginning of the 90s and has not been corrected for inflation f.e. In the coffee sector a interesting approach has emerged, partly caused by a need to compensate farmers for investments in quality improvements. Within cocoa the situation is even more critical, the criollo farms on average produce much less per Ha than the so called hybrids or improved varieties. In order to really protect this genetic resource the market must compensate for the lower output levels. Perhaps for Venezuela this is happening but many farmers with interesting bean varieties on their plots actually receive market rate or a little bit in addition. They than incline to shift to "improved varieties".
In coffee the system implemented is the "Cup of Excellence", whereby per country the best coffees are selected by the industry (internal process). In addition, an international expert panel will rate the samples and the lots will become available for an international auction. The consequence is that this triggers a quality focus from the ground up. The prices paid are upto ten times the world market price. The beans are not treated as a simple commodity but as a crucial material to develop a superior product.
For fine flavour cocoa beans this could be a very, very interesting path. Buyer can compete for specific lots and the one willing to pay the highest price will get it. Does this sound as a fair practice for both sides? I won't solve the bulk cocoa market issues in terms of cost and benefit, but at least it can start a process to valuate cocoa differently. The commodity market make a small cocoa farmer in Ghana compete with one in f.e. Papua New Guinea, which in my opinion will never result in a fair price level, but into a race to the bottom.
Actually in coffee Fair Trade has not done much to improve quality, although the fat premiums were partly invested in small infrastructure to improve product quality (the same actually has happened in cocoa small holder coops in Peru, they have been able to develop themselves into a new origin of interetsing cocoa beans, partly because of the gains from their participation in the Fair Trade market. An interesting example of this is Cepicafe, a coffee organisation that started to develop the cocoa sector in Piura some years back.
In former days Fair Trade certification was free for producers, the costs were covered by fees higher up the chain. Some six years ago this system was changed because of pressure from outside, that wanted FT to comply with ISO 65 criteria (standard for certifying bodies). This introduced additional costs for external validation for certification holders.
Best regards
Rodney Nikkels
Hi Gordon,
it was a quick, let say irrational question. As chocolatiers/chocolate maker we all try to change a bit this situation with the farmers kept poor and the others making the big bucks.
My understanding is that if high fees payment are requested from the farmer, most of them will not be able to benefit from the organic/fairtrade market that is growing around the world.
So, who set those certification prices? does have something to do that (maybe) BIG corp. don't want the farmer to uplift their life standard to keep buying power-low cost/high profit system?
We have started an action plan (in our little) that i will be able to talk about when the first lines are finally drawn.
But thanks to bring such hidden issue up, so that we are all aware on what happen around the cocoa tree.
Ps: Although i try to write in english as best i can, when i get upset my italian grammar kicks in...So if it sounds a bit confusing, with some mistakes you know why...
Ciao!
Rodney:
You are right - one of the most-cited benefits of the Fairtrade system is the pricing floor. That was really helpful when commodity prices were below that level. Now that prices are far above the floor, that argument is not as valid as it does not currently apply.
It should be pointed out that, in most instances, the $750,-/MT differential still did not cover actual production costs, especially if you're looking to promote environmentally responsible, sustainable, methods.
I agree with you that different models of pricing need to be developed but I don't think that this can be done within the existing Fairtrade system as they would have to publicly acknowledge the flaws in the system to date which I have doubts can be sustained politically.
The only long term fix for the inequities inherent in the Fairtrade model are to implement a system that has, as one of its primary focuses, improving quality all the way around. This may be a part of the Fairtrade system for coffee, but it is not a part of the system for cocoa. To avoid dependence on world market pricing you have to get out of the trap of producing commodity product and move to specialty product.
Fairtrade (i.e., FLO Fairtrade, not "'Fair' Trade" - there is a very important difference) is A part of AN answer. It is not THE answer. One of the profound ironies of the Fairtrade system is that there are tens of thousands of people around the world who owe their own livelihoods to the system being broken and seeing Fairtrade as a fix. They don't want to "fix" Fairtrade because it might mean losing their jobs. It's kind of perverse, actually. Their jobs depend on perpetuating, to some extent, the existing inequitable system (making the "best of a bad situation").
IB:
The Fairtrade certifications in Laos are likely handled by FLO-CERT ( www.flo-cert.net ). According to their web site, "FLO-CERT GmbH is an independent International Certification company offering Fairtrade Certification services to clients in more than 70 countries." They may be independent but they are located at the same address as FLO. (GmbH stands for "Gesellschaft mit beschrnkter Haftung" which is similar to an LLC (limited liability company) here in the US - they are not a non-profit company.)
There is a list of fees FLO-CERT charges to producers in PDF documents linked to from this page. There is a Scope of Certification page , but it is missing a link to the scope for cocoa. It should be noted that Transfair USA (the FLO licensee that handles Fairtrade business in the the Americas) is far less transparent when it comes to making it's fee structure available to the general public.
When it comes to organic certification, the are many different organizations that offer the service. Organic certification is something of a racket in that not all countries recognize all certifications equally. In the US, companies really want the USDA organic certification so they can use the USDA organic symbol on their packaging. If you have a different certifier, you cannot use the USDA logoeven though some other organic certifier certifies your product as being organic. You have to pay separately for USDA organic certification.
This can have some serious unintended consequences on producer organizations as I outlined in a post about some implications for the TCGA in Belize about Kraft buying Cadbury and shifting some production from Italy to Canada, requiring a shift in organic certifiers. The new organic certifier had much stricter standards for handling "transitional" cocoa and the TCGA lost their buyer for cocoa from farms in the process of attaining their organic certification.
You ask a very interesting question about who is picking up the costs of certification. In a small number of cases, someone other than the co-op is paying for the certifications. Even then, often the companies are picking up the costs in the short run with the intent of turning over responsibility for picking up the ongoing fees ASAP. (This is common with NGOs who tend to have very short time spans - two years is typical - for their programs.)In the case of the thesis cited, the members of the co-op in Laos are picking up all the costs of certification.
Dear Clay,
I think the calculation is quite correct. It is even worse when multi certifications are involved. During the times of low commodity prices as we have seen during the period 1998-2008 Fair Trade purchasing conditions offered farmers a guaranteed minimum price of USD 1750,- /MT of beans and a fixed premium for organic. So, when markets were at USD 1000,- an additional 750,- was received by the coops. The last 3 years commodity prices (in coffee and cocoa) went up to far above the Fair Trade minimum price, so the benefit is the "premium",, which is small as can be seen in your example. So the "fairness" is designed around the minimum price and social and environmental premiums. But when markets go up, the price effect evaporates. In my opinion the minimum price has beenimportant for many small holder coops to remain in business, but with the current markets the premiums should be adapted and the costs of external verification and internal control be reduced to the max.
I hope this clarifies a bit about the background of the Fair Trade principles.
Best regards
Rodney Nikkels
Who is providing the organic and fair trade certifications? Are the actual costs cited being picked up by the co-op directly or is it being picked up by some NGO?
Also from this thesis:
In addition, organic and Fairtrade certifiers also need to examine how to make certification more affordable and more culturally appropriate to small producer organisations [emphasis added], as well as to non co-op members
Antonino:
I am not sure what you mean by your response. The first part I get (and I don't really know the answer to it) ... the other two parts I don't know what you're saying.
:: Clay
I was sent an interesting thesis analyzing Fairtrade (i.e., FLO) in coffee in Laos.
The chapter titled Economic Sustainability contains the following information:
In addition to the overload of work the farmers must invest to gain 34 cents per pound extra, they also have to pay the Fairtrade Certification fee of US$3,460 per co-op (Euro2,378) per year and the administration fee and other fees of around US$5,000 per co-op which is not paid for by buyers (Wilson, 2006; Fridell, 2007B). Moreover, to gain the 15 cents per pound extra for organic coffee, they have to pay the Organic Certification fee of US$3,000 plus other administration fees of US$6,000. There are only 500 farmers in the co-op (JCFC, 2008), hence, it costs each farmer about US$35 to keep the certifications up to date.
This indicates that regardless of the higher gross incomes that result from higher Fairtrade prices, there is no guarantee of a positive net household income for these farmers who are charged the high costs of foreign inspectors and certification.
If these figures are correct, it costs this co-op (JCFC) over US$17,000/year to maintain both Fairtrade and organic certification. At a combined premium of US$0.20/lb it means the co-op must sell about 42 tons of coffee just to recoup the cost of certification out of the premiums paid.
The thesis also reports that the per-capita annual income in the region is US$580. This means that co-op members spend the equivalent of about 7% of their annual income to pay for certification. Many farmers report that they won't join, or have dropped out of, the co-op because the amount of work involved to meet Fairtrade standards for quality is not worth the extra effort involved.
Can anyone tell me how this is "Fair" trade?
Hi, I'm very new to this chocolate making (apart from a little "playing with it as a hobby) Can anyone tell me more about the ACMC Tabletop Chocolate Tempering Machine Digital Temperature Readout 6 lb capacity. Is it a good one, does it have an agitator or do you have to stir it yourself. Money is very tight and this price is closer to what I can afford as many others I have look at.
Thanks
Magriet
I think, in the realm of information that is likely to be publicly shared with you or freely available, what you find is going to be heavily influenced by the type of mfr you speak to (ie the refiner guys will tell you that their product is the best, ball milling guys the same). It will be heavily influenced by tradition and unproven beliefs (you will find folks in every camp that believe their way is the best simply because that's what they've always done, or that's what their predecessor or admired teacher told them - chefs are notorious for this). You yourself are already predisposed towards roll refiners; however in the above text you're only comparing it to one other production method (i can think of at least 8 particle size reduction technologies that are used commonly), and chances are very high that at least some of the chocolates you've consumed, you have no idea what process was used to convert it. Additionally, you will find that those who have spent the time and resources to do a scientific study to determine and quantify the differences in the various production methods will guard their results closely, as there are distinct competitive advantages that can be leveraged if one understands the options at a detailed level.
I will tell you that it is quite possible to make very similar (read: indistinguishable via the consumer) chocolate via multiple production methods (for example, i can make a dark chocolate on a refiner as well as another type (or types) of production kit that you will not be able to distinguish from one another. There are also chocolates that require a very specific type of kit to make, and that you simply can not make via another method. It is very dependent upon the type of chocolate you are making, and the specifics of that chocolate's physical and sensory components become very important. There is no single answer to the question you seek.
Generally speaking, each approach will have thematic pros and cons associated with it. Some are more heavily weighted towards product (ie how it handles raw materials and converts to finished product) while others are more heavily weighted towards throughput and energy utilization. Chocolate processing has far more science behind it than most admit to, as quite frankly most don't understand it, and the industry abounds with myth and misperception. Many companies continue to do things 'because that's the way it's always worked' and have, over time, created hypothesis as to why something does or doesn't work - but by and large, those theories haven't really been tested or challenged in a valid fashion. There are exceptions, of course, and those exceptions will, for the most part, be treated as trade secrets due to the advantage the understanding offers.
Richard:
We really are talking apples, oranges, and kumquats here. I think the first question is what market you intend to address?
IMO, there aren't a lot of people looking to set up production facilities in par with the scale of TCHO. Their Universal is a 3MT machine and is fronted by a ball mill. Theoretically, they could be producing 15-20MT/week in their plant - from liquor as they have no roaster and, on the pier, they are not likely to.
The real growth in the market (as I see it) is how to help companies that are in their real startup phase (i.e., producing in 5Kg batches) or in small production (e.g., producing 40-50kg batches) move up to the next level of production and to do so cost effectively. Going the Mast Brothers route (without the Selmi) a used convection oven, Crankandstein, CPS (or similar) winnower, and a 65L CocoaTown costs about $10k.
What's the next step? Spending over $70K for the basic (15Kg) BLT setup is too big a jump for most startups. It's not enough increase in production to justify the price differential. The cost structure goes up but the throughput to pay for the increased costs does not go up at the same rate.
The 50Kg Netzsch ChocoEasy is about $95K right now (about 60K Euros). That number is low, because you still need the support equipment (roaster, cracker, winnower, grinder) to support it.
If I was looking to spend roughly 110K Euros on new equipment there are solutions which offer up to 400Kg/day throughput (not including tempering/molding) for that amount of money. The throughput increase is great enough to justify the cost difference.
It's also really, really, really important to note that once you get above a certain production size, what really matters is materials handling. Everything can be moved around by hand when you're doing up to a couple of hundred kilos a day, but above that you really do need to consider where you're going to be storing beans (receiving/cleaning, storage, staging before and after roasting), where you're going to be storing chaff and nib, how you're moving/pumping (and storing) liquor and finished chocolate. The issues associated with materials handling are critical when considering growth above a certain size.
Where's the tipping point? I don't know - it depends on how much experience you have. I visited Pralus's factory in 2009 and they still move everything around by hand. They have 3, 250Kg Universals (two dark, one dedicated to milk). There's a 35kg ball roaster and a cracker/winnower. I did not see where they store/age their chocolate after it comes out of the Universal and before it gets molded or what they store it in. But Pralus did not start out at this production level, he's grown into it over many years. If he started from scratch today, with little experience is that how he'd set it up? Probably not.
With respect to your question about conching. It's really about three things: final particle size reduction, breaking up agglomerates and covering all the powder particles with fat, and flavor development. The "beauty" of the Netzsch approach is that it decouples the physical processes from the flavor development processes. You run it through the ball mill until you get the particle size you want and then stop pumping the chocolate through the ball mill and only beat it and aerate it to evaporate out aromatics you don't want.
You could do the physical processes another way (e.g., a grinder into a roll refiner then into a universal for a short while) and then use a device like the Duyvis-Wiener taste changer for final flavor development. (You could also blow a lot of air through the universal using both push and pull fans.)
What's important to know - and this is where having a variety of equipment on hand helps - is that the optimum time required for the the physical processes is not the same as the optimum time required to develop flavor. If it takes 48 hours of continuous grinding to get the texture where you want it you run the risk of driving off a lot of interesting flavors.
Ben:
I would be more than happy to share what we're doing. At the moment, if this were a software project, I would characterize it as "we're still in the early design phase, have a direction, and want to do one proof of concept before we open things up to the community." Very definitely when we get to the point that we have our first physical prototype - we'll open it up for community review.
I can tell you that we are working on the impact principle. There is a long way to go from your description of a drill with plates to something that works ("hoping" the beans crack is not an option unless you have an automatic return for uncracked beans on your winnower - otherwise huge amounts of extra manual labor are involved). We actually took a look at four different approaches that I had come up with after talking to a lot of people with a lot of experience cracking cocoa and building machines, and narrowed it down to one approach that we can easily prototype.
There are a bunch of fun challenges to solve, including finding an inexpensive way to control the rate at which the beans enter the cracker. The brute force method the Crankandstein relies on won't work for this method.
Another thing we're set on doing is incorporating a small digital controller - based on an Arduino - so that users can program the speed of the central cracking mechanism as well as the feed mechanism. We'll open source that, too.
Clay,
Any chance you'd give us more info about the bean cracker you're working on? After all, the biggest strength of open source is in the development process--"given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" and all that.
I'm particularly interested as this is something I've been thinking about lately, too. I've read of bean crackers that fling the beans against a metal plate and been thinking of a way to build something like this myself. I'd probably start with metal plates attached to a drill and dropping beans through them. Hopefully, they'd get hit a couple times on the way down.
-Ben
Richard:
There are differences in flavor and texture with every different combination of equipment used in the production chain. Most people never have the luxury to experiment with different production methods until they outgrow one and have to step up to a new one.
It's not always true that roll refiners and ball mills are mutually exclusive: I know of one Italian equipment manufacturer that offers a "turnkey" system that includes a roaster, cracker/winnower, roll refiner (used a liquor grinder), AND a ball mill. One of their customers has purchased an old-style melangeur and goes from the ball mill (particle size reduction) to the melangeur (using it like a conche for flavor development).
You will also find a difference between two otherwise identical roll mills - one that uses steel rollers and the other granite.
I've been working with another company that uses a large Indian-sourced wet mill to turn nibs into liquor and then uses a "universal" to convert the liquor, after it has aged, into finished chocolate.
There are some well-known and respected companies that use ball mills: Domori is one; of course, Netzsch's ChocoEasy machines incorporate their ball mils - ball mills are ideally suited to continuous production lines. One of the knocks against most conventional ball mills is uneven particle size distribution. The peak tends to be wider than other methods and their is often a bump in the tail where there are large sizes.
I would have to disagree that most startups use ball mills, though. Apart from the Netzsch machines, which are very expensive - a 50kg machine costs over $90,000 - the only other small ball mill unit I know of is from BLT. At close to $100k their "turnkey" systems are still too expensive for most startups.
My experience is that most startups start out with a small (5kg) kitchen appliance wet grinder and then graduate to one or more of the larger ones as it is comparatively economical to grow the business this way and, because the technique is essentially the same the finished product is not too different. The challenge is the support equipment. Finding comparably scaled (and priced) roasters, crackers, and winnowers is not so easy. I just solved the winnower problem (~50 lbs/hr for about $5k) and am working on an alternative to the most-used small cracker that uses an entirely different principle and should create much smaller quantities of "fines" (which increases yield). I will have a prototype sometime this summer. If it works, we plan to open-source the plans as well as offer it in kit form for those who don't want to build one themselves.
We've corresponded privately about your soon-to-open school in Irvine and I think it's something that's absolutely necessary for the industry. I applaud Qzina for taking the initiative on this. I think that starting small (with respect to batch sizes) and offering the widest possible variety of equipment to work with is a sound approach. Making good chocolate is as much (or more) ART as Science. No one way is better than another; they're all different and can all produce good chocolate. Which way (if any) is better depends on what the desired outcome is.
Three ways:
1) You can include a short note in a friend request.
2) You can add a comment to their profile and they will be notified that the comment has been added to their profile.
3) If neither 1) or 2) works, ask me to do it. As moderator, I can send messages to everyone.
Sunita:
RE: liquor/liqueur. It's a fairly common mistake, but, regardless, liqueur is only for truly alcoholic beverages.
As for how Gerard is doing what he does, I will leave it to him/Anne to tell the story.
I know search is not great. I added the Google Search box to the home page to address part of the problem and whenever you're looking for members it's best to start out using the search function on the Members page.
:: Clay
On a technical note, is there a way to send a message directly to a member on TCL without being "friends" with them?
Thanks for responding Clay.
And for the "cocoa liquor" correction. I had thought they were used interchangeably. My bad.
Whatever Gerard is doing with whichever machine, he is making some lovely flavor combinations as well as lovely single origin bars. Hence my interest in knowing more of the story.
Good that you mention that they are TCL members. After some searching I realise that "Artisan" is actually Anne Weyns. I will bring the post to her attention. I have not had good luck with the search function on The Chocolate Life.
#1 - Having visited the workshop in Ashford, Kent and spoken at length with Gerard and Anne I can tell you that the liquor is sourced from various companies - it depends on the origin of the liquor. From my memory, the beans are sourced and roasted to their specs and are not "stock" products can be purchased.
#2 - It's properly spelled liquor (cocoa liquor, chocolate liquor), not liqueur.
Origin liquors are pretty widely available, but usually not in small quantities or commitments. There are people who will make them (in relatively small quantities) bespoke for you if you are interested in purchasing them and finishing the chocolate yourself.
Also from the discussion, I know that Gerard is using his chocoeasy in some pretty interesting ways to incorporate his flavors into their chocolates.
Sunita - why don't you ask them to respond to this post directly? They have a membership on TCL.
Thank you Masur.
Any idea where their cacao liqueur is being produced? Is single origin liqueur widely available on the market? Or is this something they source specifically for their purposes?
Sunita
L'artisan du Chocolat is not bean to bar. Theystart withcacao liqueur.
"L'artisan du Chocolat uses the ChocoEasy50 to produce fine, specialty chocoaltes."
I am wondering if anyone has more information on the practises and sourcing (of cacao bean or liquor?) employed by Artisan du Chocolat.
Their bars are very enjoyable and their inclusion bars are very tasty and reasonably priced. However, I am having a hard time determining whether this company is bean-to-bar? If yes, are all their bars bean to bar? Or only their single origins? Does this company buy cacao liqueur from a third party? Are they working with local folks in country of bean origin to do some value add on site?
From what I gather from their website, their Vietnam bar sounds like it may be processed into cacao liqueur (in Vietnam?) and then conched and refined in Ashford?
from Artisan du Chocolat site:
"Dark chocolate 72% bar made with Vietnamese ground Trinitario cocoa beans, conched and refined at our production in Ashford."
Thank you in advance for anything you might be able to add to this question.
Sunita de Tourreil
The Chocolate Garage
Hello everyone,
Clay Gordon asked me moons ago to go ahead and introduce myself, since I own and operate a small chocolate business in Silicon Valley. Somehow time has kept slipping away-- typical of operating a new business I suppose.
I am Sunita de Tourreil, Founder of The Chocolate Garage . I am an enthusiastic supporter of what I call "Happy Chocolate". I have a small business that primarily organizes chocolate tasting events in and around the San Francisco Bay Area. These tastings focus on education (how and where cacao is grown, how chocolate is made) and after leading a blind tasting, I tell the stories behind the chocolate makers. I tend to focus on local artisanal makers who are part of 'Nouveau American' chocolate, redefining the way chocolate is made and pushing the envelope especially in terms of transparency.
Our emphasis is on "Happy Chocolate", by which I mean chocolate that is having a positive impact on both the planet and it's people, especially cacao farming communities. Our mission is to make Happy Chocolate more available and give people ways to make chocolate choices that support and nurture the small farmer and the high quality chocolate industry.
I have found the community that Clay has fostered here at The Chocolate Life invaluable in my own chocolate education and I hope to be able to contribute even a fraction of what I have received from The Chocolate Life.
Sincerely,
Sunita de Tourreil
