Chapter Six - Cocoa, Child Labor, and the Ivory Coast

CHAPTER SIX

Cocoa, Child Labor, and the Ivory Coast

BY THE TIME Nestlé became a global chocolate powerhouse, the cocoa supply chain was already set. The beans came mostly from West Africa, specifically Ivory Coast and Ghana, which together produced over half of the world’s cocoa.

The supply was massive. The labor behind it was not.

Cocoa farming is labor-intensive. Beans are harvested by hand, often with machetes, then fermented, dried, and packed for export. Most of the farms are small, family-run plots operating without mechanization. And most of the workers are poor.

In many regions, children make up a significant part of the workforce.

Some work alongside their families. Others are trafficked from neighboring countries like Burkina Faso and Mali. Reports from the early 2000s began documenting children working long hours in dangerous conditions, using blades, hauling heavy loads, and being exposed to pesticides. Some were unpaid. Some were never sent to school.

And Nestlé was buying the beans.

To be clear, Nestlé didn’t run these farms. It bought cocoa through middlemen, exporters, and bulk commodity traders. The structure of the industry was decentralized, opaque, and price-driven, allowing major chocolate companies to claim distance from what happened on the ground.

But by the late 1990s, that distance was no longer defensible.

In 2001, facing mounting pressure, Nestlé and other major chocolate producers signed the Harkin–Engel Protocol, a non-binding agreement to end the “worst forms of child labor” in cocoa production. The goal was clear. The follow-through wasn’t.

Deadlines were missed. Reports kept surfacing. NGOs and journalists documented little change. Lawsuits followed. In 2005, Nestlé was sued under the Alien Tort Claims Act by former child laborers from Mali who alleged the company had aided and abetted forced labor.

Nestlé argued it didn’t control the farms, that it condemned child labor, and that it had launched sustainability initiatives. It rolled out programs like Cocoa Plan, offering premiums to farmers, building schools, and setting up internal monitoring.

But progress was slow, enforcement was spotty, and the supply chain was still murky.

Nestlé continued to publish transparency reports. It admitted that some child labor still existed in its cocoa supply. It claimed to be reducing it. But full traceability, knowing exactly where every bean came from and who harvested it, that remained elusive.

The industry’s defense was always the same: complexity. Fixing the system wasn’t as simple as cutting a check or writing a code of conduct.

But the math was blunt.

Nestlé was profiting. The farms were not.

Even today, the cocoa supply chain remains one of the most ethically fraught systems in the global food economy. And Nestlé, as one of its biggest buyers, remains tied to it.

Chocolate is sweet.

Its origin story is not.