Word: cocoa
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Today Mitchell could be dressing the part of the professor as avant-hipster, in a chic pale blue sweater, cocoa blazer and thin-rimmed glasses with a quirky pointed bridge. Mitchell’s two classes at Harvard this semester, VES 173x, “American Film Criticism” and Afro-American Studies 183, “The African American Experience in Film 1930-1970,” drew substantial crowds. The former, originally capped at 50, was changed to open enrollment, and109 undergraduates are currently taking the course. Students in the class, while enduring some organizational hurdles...
...cell phone as we drive to work, sipping scalding hot coffee all the while—this, as it happens, is just plain dangerous. I’m as much a culprit as the next guy—right now, I’m drinking a cup of cocoa (with marshmallows) and listening to music (Dismemberment Plan’s “Change”) as I write...
Farmers’ employment of child slaves and family labor is a response to artificially low cocoa prices—production costs have to be cut or their farms won’t be able to compete. Recent market deregulation in West Africa abolished fixed cocoa prices that once protected the region’s farmers. Now, the price is determined on world commodity markets. Small farmers, who produce the bulk of the world’s cocoa, are particularly vulnerable to volatile world prices. The cocoa purchasing system is also skewed in favor of traders and middlemen?...
There are efforts under way to counter these economic injustices. Like the coffee served in Harvard’s dining halls, some cocoa is certified as being “fair trade.” Transfair USA, a non-profit organization, handles this certification process. Farm cooperatives that display satisfactory labor conditions and environmental standards are granted the designation, and receive a fair price (80 cents per pound instead of 50 cents) for the cocoa they produce. Fair trade chocolate is less available than fair trade coffee, but can still be purchased at Bread and Circus and the Harvest...
...your significant other comes looking for the Valentine’s Day gift you forgot to purchase: it was all in the name of conscientious consumption. You can make a date of it. Sit down together with pen and paper and write a few Valentines to the two major cocoa purchasers in the U.S.—M&M/Mars and Hershey’s—asking them to buy fair trade chocolate and put an end to child slavery. If your date is still not satisfied, head to Burdick’s—though the company does...