I wanted to post this for Valentine's Day but didn't get an opportunity. Fortune recently ran a fantastic article on the economics of chocolate - fantastic, not in the sense of a good-news story, but rather as a multifaceted look at the complexities of improving the lives of those in the developing world that provide us with many of our resources, in this case, the farmers in the Ivory Coast who produce cocoa. It's a sobering look into the realities that govern how hard it is to actually affect real change. Some excerpts:

Outside Sinikosson, El Hadj Madi Sankara cultivates 27 acres of cocoa, from which he usually harvests ten tons of beans, earning about $9,000 a year but remaining deeply in debt. Sankara and his 11-year-old son, Ibrahim, are preparing a large mound of cocoa pods for processing. "I want to help my father," says Ibrahim, standing on a pile of pods, toying with his machete. "I need to learn how to be a farmer." His sentiment captures the complexity of the child-labor issue here: Typically it is poverty that compels child labor, not greedy overseers.

Soon a group of young men and boys join the work. Among them are 8-year-old twins Hassan and Hussein. The boys, the children of a neighbor, are helping Sankara make his harvest on time. Their payment won't be in cash, but in reciprocal help from Sankara's family to their father. Not one of the kids goes to school. "We're all doing a hard job," says Sankara, "but we do not get a just price."

The farmers in Sinikosson do not know that Cargill buys their beans, but other farmers in the area are on painfully intimate terms with the Minnesota company. In the town of Thoui, members of a local farmers' cooperative say that borrowing money from Cargill has trapped them in debt and forced some of them to take their kids out of school and put them to work. "There is no other way we can buy fertilizer or feed our families throughout the year," says N'guessan Norbert Walle, a former president of the cooperative.

If farmers can't pay back their debts, they risk arrest. When Walle ran the co-op, his manager was jailed, he says, on orders from Cargill. The arrested manager, Lucien Adje, a former accounting student, says he was taken to the port city of San Pedro and put in a small cell. "You had to do everything in one place - you know, urinate, defecate. I couldn't eat much, it was so filthy."

Farmers describe these efforts [to eliminate child labor] as more akin to intimidation than to education. "People are worried that America will not buy our cocoa anymore," says Julien Kra Yau, director of a farmers' cooperative in Thoui. "That would be very bad." Adds the co-op's treasurer, Raymond Kouasse Kouadio: "It would be a total catastrophe!"

There is fair-trade chocolate on the market, but it accounts for no more than 1 percent of global supply - and the movement has little traction in Ivory Coast. A more effective way to combat child labor would be for the government of Ivory Coast to invest some of the revenue it gets from high taxes on cocoa exporters in education and social services to help poor farmers. But the government of Ivory Coast is ranked among the most corrupt in the world by Transparency International, a nongovernmental watchdog group. And it seems happier making excuses than changes.

I don't have much in the way of commentary on this. I think it's a view that perhaps those of us who are interested in economic justice need to hear. There simply isn't an easy solution - I was particularly struck by the worry that we will stop purchasing their products. Do we at times do more damage than good by refusing to purchase certain products? I simply don't know. The bottom line is that the farmers need a fair price, but the corruption between them and the end market makes such an arrangement difficult at best.

I like the way forward offered by such businesses as One Village Coffee. Here's a quote from their website:

Not only do we strive to create an exceptional cup of coffee in every roast, but we also believe our coffee is only as good as the communities we support. And so as a growing coffee company, we’re committed to helping communities both locally and internationally.

And it begins with raising our standard for coffee beyond just taste. It means supporting and partnering with organizations doing unique community development projects around the world.

I'm also a big fan of Kiva. In case you've been living under a rock, Kiva is a microfinance organization that connects lenders in the developed world with entrepreneurs in the developing world. The theory is that small loans, often $25 or so, spread out among many people can change the environment for business owners who just need a little help. It's a great way of connecting people who can afford to spare a bit of cash with those who need it in a way that offers dignity to both. That kind of creative imagination, pairing a business opportunity with compassion and integrity, is what is needed to move past our current, often destructive, models.

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