Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa
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Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa Citation Deloge, Michael Kenneth. 2022. Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa. Master's thesis, Harvard Graduate School of Design. Permanent link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37372342 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of-use#LAA Share Your Story The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Submit a story . Accessibility
Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The Case of West African Cocoa
By
Michael Deloge
Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Philosophy, The College of William and Mary, 2004
Master of Business Administration in Applied Management, Northern Arizona University, 2016
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master in Design Studies
Risk and Resilience
At the Harvard University Graduate School of Design
May, 2022
Copyright © 2022 by Michael Deloge
The author hereby grants Harvard University permission to reproduce and distribute copies of this Final Project, in
whole or in part for educational purposes.
Signature of the Author _________________________________________________________________
Michael Deloge
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Certified by ___________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Abby Spinak
Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design
Area Head, Risk and Resilience, Master in Design Studies
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Supply Chain as a Design Medium: The
Case of West African Cocoa
Michael Deloge
Cocoa seeds covered in white pulp in the two halves of a split cocoa pod. (Deloge, January 21, 2020).
1
My niece Josie feeling a sugar rush in her first ice cream cake, flavored with chocolate
ice cream and chocolate “crunchies” (Deloge, June 17, 2019).
2
Contents
Introduction: Rich and Ever‐present Chocolate............................................................................................ 4
It is Not All Sweet: Emergence of Issues in Cocoa ........................................................................................ 5
More than Child Labor .............................................................................................................................. 8
Thesis Considerations and Aims ................................................................................................................. 11
Research Question .................................................................................................................................. 11
Overview of Supply Chain as Methodology and Medium Design ........................................................... 12
Supply Chain as Methodological Tool ..................................................................................................... 13
Supply Chain as a Medium for Design .................................................................................................... 14
Supply Chain as Infrastructure ................................................................................................................ 15
The Case of Cocoa ................................................................................................................................... 16
In Brief ..................................................................................................................................................... 18
Medium Design as Eliciting Agency ........................................................................................................ 18
Sources and Data ........................................................................................................................................ 20
Interlude: Bean‐to‐Bar Operations Right in America .................................................................................. 22
Moving from Local to Global Supply Chains: Design as Sensemaking ........................................................ 25
Cocoa as a Smallholder Crop................................................................................................................... 26
Structure of the Ivorian Cocoa Supply Chain .......................................................................................... 28
Structure of the Ghanaian Cocoa Supply Chain ...................................................................................... 29
Cocoa as Part of World‐Making Projects .................................................................................................... 32
The Role of Cocoa as Development Force in the Wake of Independence.............................................. 32
Neoliberal Agendas and Pushes for Liberalization ................................................................................. 34
New Values ............................................................................................................................................. 38
Spaces of Friction as World‐Making Agendas Conflict ............................................................................... 41
Spaces of Friction: Government Control of the Supply Chain and Organic Sourcing ............................. 41
Spaces of Friction: Synthetic Chemicals and Healthy Environments ...................................................... 42
Spaces of Friction: Addressing First‐Mile Problems and Foreclosing Opportunities for Self‐
Determination ......................................................................................................................................... 44
Design as Response ..................................................................................................................................... 48
Pockets of Opportunity ........................................................................................................................... 49
Concluding Note.......................................................................................................................................... 52
Bibliography: ............................................................................................................................................... 53
3
Introduction: Rich and Ever‐present Chocolate
Chocolate is a good which often punctuates time. Here in the United States, the calendar year is
marked with moments of chocolate purchasing and consumption. February 14 rolls around and
sweethearts gift assorted boxes of chocolate, and school children unwrap little hearts of milk
chocolate wrapped in foil. A few months later, Easter celebrants hide plastic eggs containing –
among other sweets – chocolates in the shapes of Easter bunnies and Easter eggs. Halloween
brings shelves emptying of snack‐sized mixtures of peanut butter, almonds, caramel, and other
ingredients, most coated with a layer of chocolate. Loosened from specific dates, it winds its
way into the feel of seasons in general, with a cup of hot cocoa warming up my siblings and I on
cold New Hampshire winters as we would come in from shoveling the driveway or sledding.
On a more granular temporal scale, chocolate helps some of us get through our day. When I
worked for the Department of Agriculture, my avuncular colleague Ed maintained a plastic bowl
of assorted packets of M&Ms, mini‐Snickers bars, and Reese’s Cups. Colleagues up and down
the hall stopped by at all hours of the day to grab a quick chocolate snack after a stressful
meeting, as an enjoyable treat while coming by to discuss project updates with our team, or
simply as an excuse to step away from the desk, get a change of scenery, and stop by to say Hi.
The door to our small office opened with such frequency that I would not have been surprised if
the Secretary of Agriculture himself had walked in one day looking for a snack. Ed’s dedication
to keeping the workforce awake with chocolate and sugar served as a modern‐day smoke‐
break: a moment to step away from the desk, commiserate about life as a federal government
employee (spoiler alerts: bureaucracy, red tape, and unpopular management decisions), build
connections on projects, and discuss our personal lives.
A good produced from a tropical crop grown in equatorial regions of the world and at times
conflated with European quality, cocoa has become engrained in American culture. It weaves it
way into circadian rhythms and calendar planning.
Thousands of miles across the globe, the chain of activities and events that lead to snacking on
Hershey’s kisses, Oreos, and Kit Kats shape landscapes and lives in Africa, Latin America, and
elsewhere. The processes of growing, transporting, transforming cocoa to satiate demand of
Western consumers are conducted through extraction, commoditization, and the supply chains
that make it all possible.
This thesis seeks to look into the cocoa supply chains of the West African countries of Côte
d’Ivoire and Ghana, positioning cocoa supply chains within world‐making projects and part of
larger agendas on how the world – politically, economically, and culturally – should be
structured, investigating how global commodity supply chains obscure information about
product origin and production processes, and how frictions arise among world‐making projects
and create sites of contention. In doing so, I consider supply chain as a medium for design, and
thus as an appropriate focus for design interventions. It is a focus worthy of practicing our “arts
of noticing,”1 and has potential to elicit alternative approaches to the flow of global
commodities.
1
Tsing (2015), p. 17.
4It is Not All Sweet: Emergence of Issues in Cocoa
Such a sweet, innocent depiction of cocoa consumption in the above examples was torn
asunder in the early 2000s. Allegations of child slavery in cocoa production rocked the
chocolate industry, turning enjoyable, wholesome consumer goods of chocolate and other
cocoa‐based snacks into potential ethical dilemmas for consumers.
The BBC broadcast “Slavery: A Global Investigation” (2000) highlighted cases of then modern‐
day slavery, publicly exposing viewers throughout the world to “men, women, and children who
are forced to work for no money, held against their will, and controlled by violence.”2
Among the locations covered by the documentary’s directors Kate Blewett and Brian Woods
were the cocoa fields of rural Côte d’Ivoire where the investigators sought to investigate
rumors of children trafficked from nearby Mali to grow and harvest Ivorian cocoa destined for
Western chocolate and sweets markets. “Nobody had documented this before, yet the slaves
were disturbingly easy to find” the narrator states to a backdrop of grainy video of cocoa pods
being chopped from trees and split open with machetes by young men wearing torn khaki
pants, ripped shirts, and well‐worn baseball caps.3
The documentary team interviews the young workers who state that they have received no
payment for their work, have been subjected to threats and beatings should they escape the
cocoa farm where they were held captive, and report on the stark reality of their experience in
cocoa production. “There is so much pain in my heart because of this. Only God knows the
treatment we endure here. I left my country in order to earn money, I worked hard for
nothing,” one interviewee states. Another unequivocally concurs: “We have become slaves
because of cocoa.” “Had I known it was forced labor I would never have come here,” reports
another.4
The footage turns more difficult to watch as a separate group of 19 rescued slave laborers
recount being locked in a shed at night to impede any escape from the cocoa plantation,
reenact the physical and psychological beatings of the “breaking in” period, turning for the
cameras to show braids of scarring and swaths of lingering scabs across their backs and
shoulders from belt lashes endured.
The narrator pauses, asks one of the teenagers if he has ever eaten chocolate. Shaking his head,
her answers for the group in the negative: “We have never eaten chocolate… If I had to say
something to them [consumers of chocolate] it would not be nice words. They enjoy something
I suffered to make; I worked hard for them but saw no benefit. They are eating my flesh.”5
World‐making projects of multinational companies and the pressures to meet consumer
demand for chocolate and other goods made with cocoa had previously obscured potential
labor concerns within the cocoa supply chain. With Côte d’Ivoire responsible for 2/5 of the
entire global production of cocoa at the time of the documentary filming in 2000, this indicated
2
Blewett and Woods, “Slavery: A Global Investigation.”
3
Blewett and Woods.
4
Blewett and Woods.
5
Blewett and Woods.
5an issue for the entire chocolate industry. The situation at that time did not appear to be
improving: “As more and more farmers can’t afford to pay their workers, slavery will spread,”
stated the documentary narrator.6
Additional reporting by media outlets and government‐funded NGOs sought to investigate the
allegations and determine if there was any truth to them.7,8 Conclusions varied, possibly owing
to challenges of conducting research in many remote locations that permitted illegal actors the
ability to evade detection if tipped off beforehand. More likely, however, were challenges
related to parsing between different types of labor that muddy the measurements, particularly
regarding child labor.9
Nonetheless, the optics were not great for the chocolate industry. Consumers and politicians in
Europe and the United States received such allegations with alarm. “Chocolate’s bitter
aftertaste comes from the fact that the industry is a magnet for child slavery,” stated the L.A.
6
Blewett and Woods.
7
One such study is “Child Labor in the Cocoa Sector of West Africa: A Synthesis of Findings in Cameroon, Côte
d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Nigeria” published by the Sustainable Tree Crops Program (STCP) of the international Institute
of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in August 2002. Funded by the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID), the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), and the chocolate industry, this study looked at the situation in four
West African cocoa‐producing countries which accounted for approximately two‐thirds of global cocoa production
at that time. The study stated as its aim to “collect and analyze information related to working children and to
identify the extent of unacceptable (as defined by ILO Convention 182) working practices in cocoa production in
the four countries” (2002: 6). The study found evidence of payment for migrant laborers to travel from
neighboring countries to work cocoa fields in the focus countries, as well as instances of “salaried child labor,” but
ultimately concluded that the workers (including children) had not been forced to leave their homes for the cocoa
fields, but rather had done so for “the promise of a better life” (2002: 13). It is worth noting, however, that the
children interviewed were split 43% as “satisfied” and 43% as “somewhat satisfied” (2002: 13). Additionally, 86%
of the children interviewed in Côte d’Ivoire reported never having attended any schooling, with another 12%
reporting some primary school education (2002: 13); wage discrepancies between children and adult workers were
also noted as evident (2002: 14).
8
Subsequent academic research into the topic concurred that the issue of enslaved child labor, per se, was not as
pervasive as believed. One such study is “Child Labour and its Interaction with Adult Labour in Ivory Coast (1980‐
2000)” by Professor Laura De Lisi, an economist at the Panthéon‐Sorbonne University in Paris, published in The
Palgrave Handbook of Bondage and Human Rights in Africa and Asia, edited by Gwyn Campbell and Alessandro
Stanziani (2019). De Lisi (2019: 301) writes that “it appeared that reports of the systemic use of forced child labour
for cocoa cultivation had been exaggerated, and numerous academic and ground studies supported the opposite
position, namely that children worked only as secondary helpers, in addition to the hours they spent at school.”
The report also noted corrections in previous research, including studies by the IITA: “Even data from international
institutions (like the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture) were revised: the initial figures pointed out
that 90 per cent of Ivorian cocoa farms used forced child labor, but they were revised down in 2003 to less than
two per cent.” (2019: 301) De Lisi, “Child Labour and Its Interaction with Adult Labour in Ivory Coast (1980‐2000).”
9
While forced child labor may not be touching 90% of Ivorian cocoa, child labor was certainly identified as an issue
and raised questions on the circumstances under which children were working cocoa fields, what activities they
were performing, and to what degree they were being exploited. There is a definitional difference between a child
that works cocoa fields without pay on behalf of someone who should – morally and legally – be paying for that
labor and a child that works cocoa fields to help support his family. Nonetheless, the idea of eating a product that
has been made with the labor of someone who should – from a Western perspective – be at school or playing
instead of harvesting cocoa, is unsettling to many consumers of chocolate.
6Times.10 According to Antonie Fountain, current Managing Director at The VOICE Network
(Voice of Organisations in Cocoa), a “watchdog and catalyst for a reformed cocoa sector” based
in the Netherlands, “It [the BBC report] turned into moral outrage all over the place, specifically
in England and America. People were really upset.”11
For consumers at the time, the BBC report and subsequent news documentation split the
consumption of chocolate and chocolate products into two distinct time periods, snapping
apart neatly like segments of a high‐end bar of dark chocolate. Prior to the reports on child
labor in cocoa production becoming public, chocolate could be enjoyed free of any worry or
anxiety that its production resulted from potentially cruel, exploitative labor practices. The idea
of exploitation of children and teenagers in cocoa production was contrary to the idea of the
sweet innocence of chocolate. The reports thus introduced an impurity – a kind of “moral dirt”
– into the realm of possibility in chocolate consumption, bringing to mind the phrase often
associated with Mary Douglas of dirt as “matter out of place”12.
Given this moral outrage and the desire for consumers to again enjoy chocolate without worry,
there was the need to be certain that cocoa products were being made without exploitative
labor. The opacity of the cocoa supply chain, however, did not allow for quick and easy
segregation of chocolate products into “clean” cocoa, free of undesirable production methods,
and “dirty” cocoa, tainted by labor practices shunned by prevalent Western moral standards.
Without clear traceability in the commodity treatment of cocoa, the whole system became
morally suspect. As Douglas writes (2000: 36), “Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event.
Where there is dirt there is system. Dirt is the by‐product of a systematic ordering and
classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate elements.”13 With
the reports of child labor in cocoa production, the whole lot was potentially tainted; all cocoa
was possibly “dirty” cocoa.
What had previously been in the background and otherwise silent and hidden through
processes of commoditization and international cocoa supply chains thus became latent. The
structural violence of global cocoa production was thrust onto the global stage. In Galtung’s
words “structural violence is silent, it does not show – it is essentially static, it is the tranquil
waters.”14 Allegations such as those from the BBC disturbed these waters.
The political response was to promote regulation of the cocoa industry and to develop clear
labeling to identify product recognized as free of illegal labor. Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat
from Iowa, and Representative Eliot Engel, Democrat from New York, led the charge in U.S.
Congressional efforts, developing what would become known as the Harkin‐Engel Protocol or
the “Cocoa Protocol.”
10
“Not‐so‐Sweet Indulgence; Forgetful Admirers Have a New, More Principled Reason for Not Giving Chocolates on
Valentine’s Day.”
11
Harper, Bitter Chocolate.
12
Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, p. 36.
13
Douglas, p. 36.
14
As quoted in Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, p. 11. Italics in the original.
7Despite initial interest in a regulatory approach, industry pushback resulted in the Cocoa
Protocol becoming a voluntary agreement between chocolate industry players and national
governments.15 According to the International Labor Organization, “The World Cocoa
Foundation, the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, and its members committed to address
the worst forms of child labor in the growing and processing of cocoa beans and derivative
products in West Africa. The protocol laid out an Action Plan and steps to eliminate the Worst
Forms of Child Labor. Since its inception, Ghana and the Ivory Coast have implemented child‐
labor‐free certification programs, conducted surveys about the practice and publicly posted the
results. Moreover, these countries have committed to address issues identified through the
data collection and reporting process.”16
Laying out milestones by which they would meet their voluntary agreements, industry has
continually missed these deadlines.17 According to reporter Peter Whoriskey of the Washington
Post who has documented recent efforts and failures of cocoa companies to meet their
deadlines, “Industry promises began in 2001 when, under pressure from the U.S. Congress,
chiefs of some of the biggest chocolate companies signed a pledge to eradicate “the worst
forms of child labor” from their West African cocoa suppliers. It was a project companies
agreed to complete in four years.” Subsequent milestones laid out by industry for 2005, 2008,
and 2010 were missed.18
Harkin and Engel are no longer in office, the former retiring in 201319 and the latter losing
reelection in 2020. Congressional interest in addressing concerns in the cocoa sector has not
waned, however; Senators Ron Wyden, Democrat from Oregon, and Sherrod Brown, Democrat
from Ohio, called for blocking U.S. imports of Ivorian cocoa to close a loophole in the original
Harkin‐Engel Protocol.20 In a letter the Senators submitted to the Department of Homeland
Security of the United States, the two wrote “the last 20 years demonstrate that the travesty of
forced child labor in the global cocoa supply chain cannot be solved by chocolate companies’
self‐regulation.”21
More than Child Labor
Concerns around child labor and illegal slave labor in cocoa have been a “burning platform” for
the cocoa industry. It has not, however, been the only concern. Recent interest in deforestation
has spurred E.U. regulations aimed at prohibiting goods grown on deforested land or
contributing to deforestation. In the words of the World Resources Institute, “The laws of major
markets are finally catching up with the long‐recognized need to decouple commodity
15
Slave Free Chocolate, “Harkin Engel Protocol.”
16
International Labor Organization, “Africa.”
17
Whoriskey and Siegel, “Hershey, Nestle and Mars Won’t Promise Their Chocolate Is Free of Child Labor.”
18
Whoriskey and Siegel.
19
“Eliot Engel.”
20
Whoriskey, “U.S. Weighs Plan to Block Cocoa Imports Produced with Child Labor. Ivory Coast Calls Ban Unfair.”
21
Whoriskey, “Senators Call for Crackdown on Cocoa Imports Made with Forced Child Labor.”
8production from deforestation.”22 (Cocoa, in fact, is one of the commodities listed). Other
interest in labor and fair pay to cocoa farmers is also spurring action.23
While child labor was the issue that thrust interest in the cocoa supply chain front and center,
the takeaway is clear: companies involved in sourcing agricultural inputs for their global supply
chains as well as regulatory authorities interested in addressing concerns of child labor, fair pay,
and deforestation, need to have a better understanding of their supply chains, how product
that is sourced flows through them, and the processes that result in agricultural commodities
being available for the production of consumer goods. The rationale and imperative for why
there is a need to understand supply chains may change, but the need for greater transparency
into supply chains appears to have momentum regardless of the impetus for understanding
supply chain practices.
Though I focus on the cocoa supply chain, such interest in transparency and traceability is part
of a larger trend in supply chains in recent years and relevance extends beyond cocoa and
chocolate production. Several recent trends and events point to the relevance of this thesis and
its themes. First, the COVID‐19 pandemic has brought the topic of supply chains from a
humming background soundtrack of our contemporary consumerist economy to the forefront
as a source of anxiety, frustration, and occasional humor.
Abruptly finding ourselves at home in the first waves of the pandemic, toilet paper, as a notable
example, became a sought‐out commodity, leading to hoarding as officer workers and school
children used bathrooms in our apartments and houses at times of the day when we might
otherwise be in office buildings and educational facilities.
Outbreaks of COVID‐19 among employees in several meatpacking facilities led to unpredictable
supplies of chicken, pork, and beef within the domestic U.S. market, as well as deaths of facility
workers.24 Logistical concerns appeared across the globe early in the pandemic as ships from
China followed non‐standard routes to deliver PPE throughout the world, leaving containers
stranded in unexpected locations, dragging down international shipments of other goods.25
The blocking of the Suez Canal by the massive Ever Given container ship provided a humorous
example of supply chain disruption as memes made fun of the lodging of the ship and the
herculean efforts to dislodged it as global maritime traffic piled up in real‐time.26
Second, where products come from has not merely been a logistical consideration, but one of
morals as well. In response to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, American consumers and
states sought to clear Russian vodka and other products from stores.27
Besides geopolitical concerns of power and empire, Western consumers and governments
increasingly question where their products come from and how they were produced. To a
greater degree, consumers desire to understand the ethical considerations of where their
22
Li et al., “How a New EU Regulation Can Reduce Deforestation Globally.”
23
Arrion, Interview with Michel Arrion, Executive Direction at the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO).
24
Law, “COVID‐19 Meat Shortages Could Last for Months.”
25
Goodman et al., “‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This.’”
26
Bergman, “Why the Stuck Suez Canal Boat Became the Biggest Meme of 2021 so Far.”
27
Hammer, “Groundswell of States Demands Russian Products Removed from Shelves.”
9goods come from. “This is a global movement,” remarked Gero Leson, VP of Special Operations
at Dr. Bronner’s, about the increased need in understanding supply chains and fostering
transparency and understanding of inputs.28
Flowing from individual consumers and consumer groups, concerns materialize at the
government level and propel action: U.S. Congressional legislation passed in December 2021
moved forward a targeted cracked down on Chinese goods made with forced labor.29 As I write
this in May 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved a rule that can
lead to publicly traded companies needing to report how their business affects the climate.
According to the New York Times, “[e]nvironmental and corporate‐governance advocates said
the transparency the rule requires would hold companies accountable for their role in climate
change, and give investors more leverage in forcing changes to business practices that
contribute to rising global temperatures.”30
Furthermore, with Americans – and especially younger Americans – increasingly concerned
about the rights of workers31,32 interest in products’ supply chain may be lasting rather than a
current blip on the screen of production and distribution.
28
Leson and Eisenlohr, Interview with Dr. Bronner’s.
29
Edmondson, “Congress Passes Ban on Goods From China’s Xinjiang Region Over Forced Labor Concerns.”
30
Goldstein and Eavis, “The S.E.C. Moves Closer to Enacting a Sweeping Climate Disclosure Rule.”
31
Gramlich, “Majorities in U.S. Say Unions Have a Positive Effect, Declining Membership Is Bad.”
32
Divito and Sojourner, “Americans Are More Pro‐Union – and Anti‐Big Business – than at Any Time in Decades.”
10Thesis Considerations and Aims
Given the increased interest in supply chains and sourcing of products, this thesis considers
supply chains as a medium for design, worthy of attention for how supply chains discipline
actors, obscure production information, and challenge traceability goals of organizations.
Largely viewed through a technical lens of infrastructure which moves product from one node
to another, supply chains transfer goods over both short and large distances. In doing so,
however, they result in encounters among various actors; pursuing different world‐making
projects through cocoa, these encounters often illuminate friction in the cocoa supply chain.
Viewing cocoa supply chains as part of larger world‐making processes and agendas, I highlight
several examples of friction in the cocoa supply chains of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire as they serve
as case studies into understanding where different world‐making projects conflict and
potentially obscure information on cocoa as both product and behavior are disciplined by
supply chain processes.
Along these lines, the pathways of cocoa supply chains in the West African countries of Côte
d’Ivoire and Ghana, create opportunities for some assemblages and portend to foreclose others
with their current configurations of impoverished smallholder farmers in rural areas, regulatory
chokepoints, and international pressures of profit and ethics.
As well as considering the cocoa supply chain as a medium for design, evaluating the cocoa
supply chain is a methodological approach which can illuminate some of the challenges in
understanding how and where cocoa is produced. This thesis briefly considers the nuances of
the cocoa supply chains within Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire to show how the structures of these
supply chains create challenges for traceability efforts, obscure information, and can create
conflicts between entities and individuals with different world‐making agendas.
As both an analytical tool and a medium for design, I am emphasizing the cocoa supply chain as
a worthy focus of attention. It is, to use a phrase from Anna Tsing, an appropriate area toward
which we should direct our “arts of noticing.” And in noticing, perhaps we can identify
opportunities to envision new futures for cocoa encounters, ones that foster agency among
cocoa farmers and other actors, address deforestation and environmental degradation, and
provoke new forms of global commodity flows.
Research Question
Through looking at the cocoa supply chains of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, this thesis aims to
understand: How do processes of commodification and the infrastructure of global supply
chains work to obscure information on the origin and production of cocoa beans?
And: to what degree can supply chains be designed to better understand the origin and
production processes of cocoa?
Beyond simply looking at the flow of cocoa beans from Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire through the
two West African countries, I intend to consider: within the current infrastructure of the cocoa
supply chain, as cocoa moves further into a global regime of traceability and monitoring on
11local and national levels, what are potential pockets of agency for change to realize different
visions of the world?
Overview of Supply Chain as Methodology and Medium Design
Supply chains such as that for cocoa cross geographic and legal terrain and involve processes of
nature and human activity. As cocoa moves from West African farms through country to export,
to facilities for processing into semi‐finished and finished chocolate products and on to
consumption, the world of cocoa is one of entanglements and interplay. With such
entanglements and interplay come frictions.33 The desires of impoverished Ivorian farmers to
increase their income and feed their families by planting on recently cleared virgin forest
clashes with European goals to halt deforestation. Cultural traditions of migrant labor and child
labor on family farms confronts international labor standards and the values of American
consumers and Congress. Multinational pressures to source cocoa for consumer demand
conflicts with the goals of national governments to control the flow of cocoa, both as political
tool and as a source of economic development.34
You can’t find all these frictions on the inside foil of a Lindt truffle or spelled out on the label of
a bar of Hershey’s chocolate (at least, not yet). Indeed, the cocoa supply chain works not only
to move cocoa beans across distances, but also to hide the background information of the
cocoa that goes into our goods, and discipline behavior of actors throughout the supply chain.
Thus, supply chains like the one for cocoa are forces of obscuring and obfuscating information
and generating frictions.
This thesis is interested in understanding how supply chains such as the cocoa supply chain
obscure information and remove valuable characteristics through processes of commodification
as cocoa beans from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana move through their supply chains. In doing so,
supply chain is proposed not only as a medium for design, but as an analytical methodology
that can illuminate occasions – infrastructural chokepoints and situations of economic precarity
– where information is obscured to offer opportunities to push back against obscuring
processes.
Relatedly, this thesis thus is intended to provoke interest in understanding to what degree
supply chains can be unpacked and designed to unearth (or not allow to be obscured in the first
place) information and quality characteristics that would otherwise be hidden through forces of
commoditization of raw inputs and the transnational flows of such inputs as they are collected,
33
In using this language, I am influenced in particular by the work of Anna Tsing and Keller Easterling. Tsing’s The
Mushroom at the End of the World inspires my use of “entanglements” (2015: vii), and Easterling’s Medium Design
gives me the notion of “interplay” (2021: x). Both words and much of the vocabulary and phrasing of Tsing and
Easterling in these two works (and other pieces) provided me with much food for thought through the course of
this research.
34
Surely, neoliberal capitalism stands out as a hegemonic force in such international supply chains in recent history
as governments and corporations strive to meet consumer demand in exchange for money; nonetheless,
neoliberal capitalism is not the only force at work, and in turn results in additional frictions as it encounters other
forces or even its own internal contradictions.
12refined through value‐added processes, and consumed in disparate and geographically
dispersed locations.
With this research taking place within a Graduate School of Design, the word “design” is
imperative here. Supply chains, like other large scale infrastructure projects and similar
processes, may have a basis in climate and historical and political precedents, but ultimately are
the result of human decision making and therefore appropriate to consider as a medium for
design and design interventions. Considering supply chains as a medium reimbues global
commodity flows with the potential for agency – as consumers, processors, traders, farmers,
government officials, and development workers.
Supply Chain as Methodological Tool
In this treatment, I am employing supply chain as a methodological approach. Whereas Carse
and Lewis are concerned with events and standards at particular nodes of waterways, my
approach is more akin to Anna Tsing’s consideration of matsutake in The Mushroom at the End
of the World or Nikhil Anand’s treatment of water infrastructure in Hydraulic City, looking at the
entanglements that arise in cocoa encounters.
In this manner, my methodological approach in this research endeavor has been to try to
understand the journey of West African cocoa from its cultivation and harvest in rural farms
through points of export and processing. Following cocoa in this manner would look at the
structure of the cocoa supply chain and how that structure transforms the quality
characteristics of cocoa, obscures information, and challenges traceability efforts.
Rather than focusing on a particular node or linkage, this approach pulls back the curtain
revealing a “matrix” that undergirds behavior throughout the supply chain. Timothy Mitchell
(2009: 409) considers such a “matrix” as a “technical zone,” “a set of coordinated but widely
dispersed regulations, calculative arrangements, infrastructures and technical procedures that
render certain objects or flows governable.”35
In her Medium Design (2021: x), Keller Easterling employs similar language on her approach as
“ask[ing] readers to look with half‐closed eyes at the world, focusing not only on objects with
names, shapes, and outlines, but also on the matrix or medium of activities and latent
potentials that those objects generate. It looks beyond object to matrix. It looks beyond
nominative expressions to infinite expressions of activity and interplay [emphasis mine].”36
Such interplays and frictions that arise from the matrix of activities, regulations, and standards
provide rich material for evaluating how supply chains work and how they promote certain
world‐making projects. Several of these will be discussed toward the end of the thesis.
In the case of cocoa, government regulations of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana interrupt the flow of
cocoa and force companies to relinquish control of their supply chains in order to comply with
the government‐mandated structures within the countries. Ignoring these regulatory
35
Mitchell, “Carbon Democracy," p. 409.
36
Easterling, Medium Design: Knowing How to Work on the World, p. x.
13requirements paints a picture of cocoa supply chains that are more concretely within the
control of companies and more open and free for design interventions; bringing such
requirements into the picture can explain certain organizational decisions that otherwise may
appear strange to outside observers, and show the structure within which design interventions
can take place.
In this brief treatment, I am attempting to “notice” what is going on at different intervals in the
cocoa supply chain from Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana. I am seeking out other ways of seeing how
the cocoa supply chain works on the ground as cocoa makes its global journey from pod to
product and learning from sources more intimately familiar with cocoa harvesting, chocolate
production, and the situation in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.
Supply Chain as a Medium for Design
In this thesis and its consideration of cocoa as a case study, I am emphasizing supply chain as a
medium for design. An architect might look at a plot of land and the materials available as the
medium through which the aspirations of her client are realized and made legible in the
physical world. Likewise, an urban designer may look at the layout of neighborhoods,
recreational areas, and business districts and the spaces in between as nodes and possible
linkages that form the spatial and relational material from which to propose a public
transportation network.
Supply chains, in turn, can be viewed similarly as a medium for the design of the flow of goods
and services, with their nodes and linkages connecting different pieces of the network. In using
the term “medium design,” I am borrowing from Easterling’s recent work (2021) Medium
Design: Knowing How to Work on the World, already mentioned above. In her preface,
Easterling (2021: xi), writes “Speaking to any reader in any discipline as a designer, the
discussion treats design in space as a form of activism with special powers. Just as a
contemplation of medium inverts the customary focus on object over field or figure over
ground, this medium design may prompt practical inventions and paradigm shifts that
fundamentally alter approaches to all kinds of political and environmental dilemmas.”37
As a design medium, supply chains identify “the protocols, practices, procedures, and
technologies that establish the rules for coordination across sociotechnical systems and, in so
doing, establish path dependencies that shape future social and economic priorities. Because
standards are designed and codified by particular actors in specific times and places, it follows
that they are sites of power and resistance; they reflect and reproduce particular values,
beliefs, and assumptions (Bowker and Star, 1999; Timmermans and Epstein, 2010).”38
In positioning supply chain as a medium for design, I propose first that considering the flow of
cocoa through the supply chain is illuminating in understanding how the infrastructure of the
supply chains of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire create frictions and moments where biographical
information on cocoa is obscured, presenting possible opportunities for design interventions.
37
Easterling, p. xi. Italics in the original.
38
Quotes in Carse and Lewis, “Toward a Political Ecology of Infrastructure Standards,” p. 13.
14Looking back to the Easterling quote above of “any reader of any discipline as a designer,” I
consider “designer” anyone who aims to make a change within the supply chain. These can be
top‐down and comprehensive, such as Congressional considerations of banning cocoa from
Côte d’Ivoire from entrance into the United States, or European Union aims at restricting
products linked to deforestation. Or they can be specific and focused, such as efforts to
improve farmer yield in a particular location or region of Ghana or Côte d’Ivoire. They can also
flow throughout multiple nodes and linkages of the supply chain, such as efforts of companies
like Dr. Bronner’s to develop a new cocoa supply chain from the ground up through export and
processing cocoa into chocolate for their own consumer demand and for others seeking similar
fair trade, organic certified product.
The two points here that I wish to emphasize are that: 1) Anyone interested in making any type
of intervention within cocoa should be considered a designer, and, 2) Interventions should not
focus merely on a particular node or linkage, but that the appropriate medium for design is the
supply chain as a whole or, more appropriately, that design interventions should avoid site‐ or
process‐specific myopia, keeping eyes open to upstream and downstream events and activities
the lead into and lead out of foci of interest. A third consideration that we will see is that
interventions should be commodity‐specific; what works for palm oil or coffee may not
necessarily work for cocoa due to the regulatory structure of current cocoa supply chains.
Supply Chain as Infrastructure
In considering the cocoa supply chain, I find something unsettling about the term “supply
chain.” I find it technical – more focused on logistics, last‐mile quantitative analysis, hedging of
fuel costs, frictions of regulatory restrictions around the stacking of shipping containers –
denuded of life and labor that go into making the machinery work. Carse and Lewis (2017: 18)
write: “While logistics can account for a certain degree of uncertainty, it relies too heavily on
mathematical abstractions that exclude, externalize, or otherwise bracket out material, social,
and ecological concerns.”39 Emphasizing the logistical nature of supply chains feeds this
narrative of a supply chain as a technical topic, devoid of the considerations of the people and
plants that go into providing cocoa to meet global demand.
To speak of the cocoa supply chain in this regard is then to speak of infrastructure and
networks of nodes and linkages. To this end, the language of infrastructure and critical
infrastructure studies is useful in highlighting how such arrangements challenge the ability to
understand where cocoa comes from and how it has been produced. The technical nature of a
“global supply chain” thwarts traceability efforts. Quality characteristics slip off as cocoa flows
through regulatory choke points; what used to be legible loses legibility.
In looking at the cocoa supply chains of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, this thesis might be
considered a type of “infrastructural inversion” interested in understanding how cocoa flows
and how such flow obscures information around cocoa. Here I am borrowing the term
39
Carse and Lewis, p. 18.
15“infrastructural inversion” from Carse and Lewis (2017: 11) “unearthing the world‐making (if
often ignored) histories of standardization and connection (Bowker and Star, 1999).”40
While Carse and Lewis focus on the development of standards for waterways such as the
Panama Canal and environmental conflict that arises out of activities such as dredging, my
interest is around how the infrastructural processes of the cocoa supply chain act as a force of
obscuring information in moments of friction. Standards are certainly a part of that
infrastructure; standards such as the size of cocoa sacks, the moisture content of cocoa beans,
and the arrangement of sacks of cocoa beans in shipping containers, offer potential for other
investigation in how and why they have shaped and been shaped by the cocoa supply chain and
the interests of various actors.
Though, I recognize that standards play a role in guiding infrastructure, I will leave that topic to
more adept scholars, focusing instead on the flow of cocoa beans through supply chains, where
conflicts of world‐making projects appear, and how forces of commoditization affect
traceability and quality characteristics of cocoa within these conflicts.
The Case of Cocoa
The case of cocoa as a focus of study is one that I find particularly intriguing. Cocoa is a good
that is consumed largely in wealthier nations. While West African farmers may grow manioc,
plantains, and other crops to feed their families and then send surplus production to local
markets, cocoa is grown for supply chains that lead toward international destinations, useful in
their conversion to cash to provide for farming families and communities.
It is not necessary for the physical sustenance of its consumers. Unlike other agricultural
commodities that fill our stomachs and provide us with nutrients for our daily life, cocoa
nonetheless plays a strong role in cultural rituals of celebration, holidays, and emotional well‐
being. It is ubiquitous, found not just in solid bar form but also in syrups and sauces in ice
creams, coating of other sweet goods, flavorings in breakfast cereals and on the tops of
cappuccinos.
On the production end, cocoa is grown by millions of smallholder farms in rural areas,41 with
market domination by the West African countries of Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana.42 In between
production and consumption, the commodity is subjected to the capitalist, nationalist, and
ethical interests and forces of multinational companies, national governments, and
international NGOs.
Cocoa is also an appropriate case study because of pressures over the past two decades to
reform the cocoa sector. The emergence of concerns of illegal labor and trafficked child slave
labor in cocoa production provided an impetus to spur change and push for transparency in an
otherwise opaque supply chain. Other issues such as deforestation and concerns around the
wages received by farmers have thrown more weight and interest around the need for changes
40
Carse and Lewis, p. 11.
41
“The Cocoa Supply Chain.”
42
“Cocoa Production by Country 2019/2020.”
16in the cocoa supply chain. While I value consumer‐driven movements that push for change in
other supply chains, cocoa attracted my attention due to the interest of Congress in pushing for
reform. Conversations I have had in my research indicate that not only are elected officials
interested in strengthening the cocoa supply chain to address concerns of labor and
deforestation, but industry players are also seeking regulation to improve cocoa sourcing.
Companies – seeking to wade through evolving regulations – are asking to be regulated so that
they can better understand how to comply with regulations and avoid finding themselves on
the receiving end of negative press or lawsuits in the future.
As a tropical crop, a Western consumer acutely sensitized to labor and environmental concerns
in chocolate production cannot opt out of the global supply chains of cocoa production simply
by deciding to plant some cocoa trees in her backyard. “Eat local” trends and sourcing the
ingredients for meals within a certain radius is a possibility for many,43 but most global
consumers cannot simply wait for cocoa season, visit a local orchard, and then go home with
half a bushel of cocoa pods to turn into homemade chocolate the way I can pick apples or pears
in New England autumn to turn into pies, crisps, and tarts.
Concerned about the treatment of workers in harvesting cocoa or possible deforestation to
clear land, I would need to fly thousands of miles across the globe to see the working conditions
on a cocoa farm. I could feasibly identify sources for locally raised animals and vegetables from
producers that might be willing to show me their operations, educate me on how they are
raising and processing their products, inform me about their environmental and labor
standards, even if doing so would raise my grocery bill drastically. That is not the case for cocoa.
As a result, consumption of cocoa is inseparable from global supply chains. Simply put, as a
consumer, if I want a bar of chocolate for a tasty treat, chocolate chips to go into cookies while I
work on this thesis, cocoa powder for hot chocolate on a winter day or my niece’s birthday
cake, I am inextricably pulled into global supply chains and their entanglements and frictions
and the general messiness that comes with commodity flows over such a large distance. Lacking
pathways that connect cocoa production in hot and humid regions to my local Somerville
Market Basket or Whole Foods, the opportunity (indeed, privilege) to consume cocoa is
foreclosed. As Western consumers, if we want cocoa, we need global supply chains.
And if we need these global supply chains, how can we grapple with the fact that in moving
cocoa beans from rural small holder farms, across West African roads and over oceans, grinding
and mixing and processing in different configurations, wrapping in colorful packaging and
placing on grocery shelves, such supply chains – with their inertia toward obfuscation and
capitalist market pressures – are ripe not only for growing cocoa pods but for hiding instances
of violence, environmental exploitation, and dependency on the precarious boom‐and‐bust
cycles of commodity markets?
43
Surely when this arises in certain circles discussion centers on how such practices are prohibitively expensive for
many in areas where food systems are more tightly intertwined with national and international supply chains. My
own experience of living in rural Colombia and briefly in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia reminds me that eating local is
not always a trend, but the way of life in other parts of the world.
17In Brief
To summarize, in the following pages I aim to perform a few functions and use cocoa as a case
study to do so:
First, I employ the cocoa supply chain as a methodological tool. I begin this discussion by
considering a recent visit I made earlier this year to a bean‐to‐bar cocoa farm and chocolate
making facility in Hawai’i to discuss local, vertically integrated production. I then look at the
cocoa supply chains of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire as counter examples to such local production in
their role of providing the bulk of the world’s cocoa through global supply chains.
Second, I consider supply chain as a medium for design. In this way, I position the cocoa supply
chain as a medium with potential for design interventions and possible opportunities for design
approaches that are more holistic than looking strictly at a particular node or linkage in the
cocoa supply chain.
Medium Design as Eliciting Agency
What I see as valuable in recognizing supply chain as a design medium is how such a
perspective elicits ideas of agency. Viewing supply chains as a medium contrasts with the
perspective of procurement as a transaction activity. Procurement is a function of buying and
selling, purchasing inputs and signing contracts to get what is needed for a business, household,
or other unit of economic activity. It is largely transactional, with questions focused on ability to
provide volume or service levels requested by the customer and payment terms. This approach
has been one of myopia and, at times, willful ignorance. Problems in the supply chain were the
responsibility of the organization selling inputs, and not the company buying such inputs.
What has happened in recent years is a shift to a new approach, one of looking upstream and
into the practices of suppliers and pushing for greater transparency. This can mean greater
scrutiny on suppliers, or the decision to avoid external suppliers and seek vertical integration of
operations, or anything in between.
Such a shift in perspective has emerged in recent years in the cocoa supply chain. Growing
interest in where products come from and how they are produced – whether by government
mandate, consumer‐driven campaigns, or company ethics – has spurred companies to expand
their inputs from a transactional basis to having a greater understanding of how and where
those inputs were produced.
The new shift in perspective positions actors across supply chains as designers and, thus,
provokes agency of different actors in determining how supply chains are designed and who is
involved in such design. As the following pages will demonstrate, not every actor will be able to
influence each node or linkage of the cocoa supply chain; nonetheless, pockets for exercising
agency may appear within which to design and implement interventions.
In the above approach, I am reminded of Jenny Odell’s 2020 commencement address at the
Graduate School of Design. In this speech – subsequently published by Harvard University
Graduate School of Design and Strenberg Press – Odell (2020: 18) offers “I want to propose to
18you two ways of thinking about design that are different from design as making: design as a
form of sensemaking, and design as response.”44
Supply chains are both: on the one hand, they are mechanisms of making sense of the world
and processes of extraction, value addition, and movement; on the other hand, they are
configurations of relations and interactions in response to commodity origin, government
regulations, and consumer needs. We can consider the structure of cocoa supply chains to
elucidate how cocoa is used in larger world‐making projects and make sense of the world of
cocoa; in turn, we can also design interventions within cocoa as a response to the
arrangements and relationships within the cocoa supply chain.
44
Odell, Inhabiting the Negative Space, p. 18.
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