Small-batch chocolate manufacturer Shawn Askinosie made his first post yesterday as a Huffington Post blogger. Writing about the direct trade industry, the Springfield entrepreneur recounts the direct trade relationships with farmers in Tanzania that went sour last year after they transitioned their cocoa bean harvesting to Coca-Cola products. That meant no more cocoa beans for production of Askinosie Chocolate.
For Askinosie, direct trade meant getting involved in the community (providing a Tanzanian school’s first textbooks and potable water for 2,000 residents after a drilling project), paying above world market prices (of which the farmers typically only earn 70 percent) and sharing profits with the local farmers (including a line-by-line review of the financials translated to their native language) – steps well above cocoa industry standards. It’s not been easy.
“It's the most complicated and professionally challenging thing I've ever done,” Askinosie wrote in the Huffington Post. “And before I started this chocolate factory, I was a criminal defense lawyer specializing in the most serious felony cases. That was challenging. This is more so.”
Though devastating, Askinosie says the shift to Coke in Tenende is shifting his idea of success. It wasn’t the end of the story.
“Direct trade is messy. Community development is messy enough in my own neighborhood, but it's exponentially messy in the developing world,” he writes. “Success here was them selling Coke, us finding this new outstanding farmer group whose beans are superb and who we're thrilled to develop a long relationship with.”
Read more at
the Huffington Post.[[In-content Ad]]
