Brazil was the world's seventh-largest cocoa producer in 2017. It exports processed cocoa products to the United States, Argentina, Netherlands, Mexico, Chile and Uruguay, the report said. Bahia and Pará as responsible for 93 percent of all cocoa production in Brazil in 2018.
The global chocolate supply chain is tainted by the use of cocoa from Brazilian farms where human rights violations are common, a report released Friday said. Among the abuses detailed are farmers forced to work off debts to landowners or in degrading conditions, as well as thousands of instances of child labor. The document is the result of a joint effort between the Brazilian Federal Labor Prosecution Office and the International Labor Organization, and based on findings from a yearlong field investigation and a series of interviews with authorities and rural workers.
On cocoa farms in Pará and Bahia family farmers work in "partnership" with landowners, sharing the profits. The report, however, said that this relationship can be abusive and, in some cases, be classified as modern slavery. In Brazil, the definition of modern slavery includes debt bondage, degrading work conditions, long hours that pose a risk to a worker's health or life, as well as work that violates a person's dignity.
"Most family farmers have no place to live, they camp at the rural property. They don't have proper working tools, and no technical assistance on how to apply (dangerous) pesticides," said de Carvalho. Public prosecutors refer to this practice as a "false partnership" in which "workers have no autonomy to choose what to plant, which techniques to use or for whom to sell," said the report.
Child labor on cocoa farms is a recurring practice, the report said, and is considered normal in the communities where it is practiced, even though it is illegal in Brazil.
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