{"id":498,"date":"2017-07-22T22:21:35","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T22:21:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/?p=498"},"modified":"2017-08-10T17:12:20","modified_gmt":"2017-08-10T17:12:20","slug":"chocolateits-bittersweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/chocolateits-bittersweet\/","title":{"rendered":"Chocolate\u2026it\u2019s Bittersweet"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_499\" style=\"width: 438px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-499\" class=\" wp-image-499\" src=\"http:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"428\" height=\"285\" srcset=\"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic-624x416.jpg 624w, https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/chocolatePic.jpg 1500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 428px) 100vw, 428px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-499\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Chocolate&#8230;from beans to bars.\u00a0<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Chocolate has gotten somewhat of a bad rap recently and deservedly so.\u00a0 But if chocolate demands and\/or prices shifted and children were no longer forced to harvest cocoa, would the majority of them return to school or continue working doing something else?\u00a0 I think it is a fair question to ask when trying to determine just how much blame the chocolate industry deserves.\u00a0 Not to make excuses for corporations who don\u2019t deserve them but if solutions are to arise causes must be established and surely a worldwide chocolate demand is not the only reason children in the Ivory Coast are working when they should be in school.\u00a0 That is not to shift blame from an industry that could have done a better job ensuring that their raw goods were being grown and harvested without the use of child labor or the violation of human rights.\u00a0 I can\u2019t help but think about the price of chocolate playing a role in all of this.\u00a0 Chocolate is cheap in this country\u2026maybe too cheap considering the climate required to grow cocoa, the resources like water it needs and the effort it takes to harvest the crop.\u00a0 Maybe the price for a candy bar needs to double or triple.\u00a0 Sound crazy?\u00a0 This change in price would likely do little to affect how most Americans consume chocolate but it could allow chocolate producers the overhead to pay fair prices to their cocoa suppliers.\u00a0 This way the farmers that grow cocoa could afford to hire adults and pay them to help harvest the product.\u00a0 A trickle-down effect may be giving parents jobs and keeping children in schools where they belong.\u00a0 Then maybe someday the farmers might actually be able to buy a chocolate bar so they can enjoy the fruits of their labor.\u00a0 Crazy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Art &amp; Science of Bean to Bar Chocolate.\u201d\u00a0 Chocolate Alchemy, <a href=\"http:\/\/chocolatealchemy.com\/\">http:\/\/chocolatealchemy.com\/<\/a>.\u00a0 Accessed 21 July 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chocolate has gotten somewhat of a bad rap recently and deservedly so.\u00a0 But if chocolate demands and\/or prices shifted and children were no longer forced to harvest cocoa, would the majority of them return to school or continue working doing something else?\u00a0 I think it is a fair question to ask when trying to determine just how much blame the&#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/chocolateits-bittersweet\/\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,22,4,5,1],"tags":[137,133,184,66],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-consumption","category-farming","category-international-trade","category-social-movements","category-uncategorized","tag-child-labor","tag-chocolate","tag-consumerism","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.washington.edu\/ps385\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}