One of our most popular items here at the Welcome Mat, and by far the sweetest, would have to be our Divine Chocolate bars. We don't love them just because they're delicious (which they are) but also because Divine Chocolate is such an inspiring company, that really embodies the fair trade cause.
Divine Chocolate is grown in Ghana. But unlike other fair trade chocolate companies, the farmers that grow this chocolate actually own 45% of the company, so they are not only suppliers of the company, they are the company.
Chocolate came to Ghana in 1878, and like many other crops was grown and sold primarily to the Western world. Unfortunately for the most part, cocoa buyers would only give the lowest possible price to farmers. Buyers would get the highest profit, but the farmers who did all the work growing and harvesting the product would reap the lowest benefit, and just merely scrape by on what they were getting.
But it wasn't until the 1990's that a structural adjustment program led to the liberalisation of the cocoa market in Ghana. That's when Nana Frimpong Abrebrese a farmer representative on the cocoa board and some others got the idea for an organization run by farmers, helping them to make better business deals than they had been able to previously. That's when Kuapa Kokoo was started in 1993, a farmers cooperative that would buy and sell chocolate on their own. They then decided that instead of just producing chocolate and selling it at fair trade prices, they would actually invest in making a chocolate bar to sell in competition with other mainstream bars. In 1998, Divine Fair Trade milk chocolate was launched in the UK. It would not come to American shores until 2007.What makes this company so special and outstanding among other companies is the innovation it took the farmers to take control of their own business. While there are many fair trade companies with similar products, there are not many that were started by the farmers themselves. While fair trade often gives a helping hand to small businesses around the world, this company lifted itself up with its own arms.
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