Monday saw the official start of Chocolate Week, but before you make a dash for your stash of chocolate, stop to consider where the cocoa beans that produce that addictive and highly indulgent treat come from?

On Monday evening the Grenada Board of Tourism invited me to the private screening of Nothing Like Chocolate, an independent film Directed by Kum-Kum Bhavnani, narrated by Susan Sarandon and starring Mott Green – an anarchist chocolatier on the island of Grenada.

Kum-Kum Bhavnani and her film crew trekked through the rural landscape documenting the continued growth of Mott Green’s chocolate-producing co-operative, while exposing the practices of how the harvesting of the cacao bean has been violated commercially. The film recaps the shocking discovery and inhumane treatment of trafficked children, forced to work on cocoa farms in West Africa. Juxtapose ginormous factories in the USA whose owners know what’s going on, but don’t care enough to regulate the industry.

I visited Mott Green’s Bon Bon shop at the Belmont Estate on my last trip to Grenada and sampled their award-winning organic dark chocolate. In my opinion, it was sensational. Organic chocolate is an acquired taste, so I wouldn’t touch the 100% chocolate bar again unless I was stripped of all my taste buds. But, I am not being a biased patriot when I say that the fruity flavours in the 60% bar, have really grown on me.

The film was fascinating, here you had an American man nicknamed ‘Smilo’ by Grenadians and to us a Willy Wonka with good intentions, running around Grenada, often bare-footed with noticeable holes in his t-shirt. As a British Grenadian I knew that it was this very behavior that allowed him to infiltrate the local community. Grenadians are friendly, but proud people, so walking humbly among them works better than behaving like a figure of superiority. Mott was exactly that when he addressed us after the film at the Ritzy Picturehouse in Brixton. He was unpretentious, soft spoken and honest and with every question that incited expansion, his main concern was ensuring his collective of farmers reaped the benefits as much as the Grenada Chocolate Company did.

Throughout the film we saw the curious faces of Grenadian people and children and the active lives of cocoa farmers. While local farmers collected $60 for a month of physically strenuous work, scenes of men with expressions of kids in a candy store gambled the price of cocoa beans earning up to $100 a minute. While a farmer said that this little wage for harvesting his cocoa will be his income to eat and survive for the next month, to the gambler the actual bean was insignificant.

Present in a few of the scenes was an inspiring Complexd Woman – independent female cocoa farmer Necile Stewart. On screen Necile shared with us her love for agriculture, which was almost infectious as she sang her way through the bushes while maintaining her crop. It was a real tearjerker moment when Necile single handily mixed cement to lay the foundations for a bedroom she was building for her son. I’ve been working on the Female Empowerment issue focusing on women who prosper in a male dominated environment and Necile was a perfect example. There stood a female farmer and construction worker, raising seven children and still had time to spruce up and put on her Sundays best for Church.

After the film Director, Kum Kum finished by saying that she hoped the film would encourage people to not buy chocolate made with cocoa beans produced by enslaved children. And, on that note I will proudly profess that any time I have a chocolate craving, I will pop down to my local Waitrose or Wholefoods and pay that extra bit for Chocolate from the Grenadian Chocolate Company, whose bars were delivered to the UK sustainably on a sailing ship.

I grabbed a few minutes with the inspirational Mott Green aka Smilo after the screening.

Editor: Why did you choose Grenada and are you planning to expand on the products you offer at the Grenadian Chocolate Company?

Mott: I’m cynic! The fair trade movement hasn’t done anything. I think the best thing to do as a chocolate maker is to make chocolate right near the origin of the cocoa so there is no chance of corruption. The climate is not the best place to keep the chocolate cool, it’s very hot and humid and Grenada has one of the most expensive electricity rates in the world, but because of genetics Grenada is able to produce one of the best tasting chocolates. You can have the best equipment in the world, but you can’t take a rubbish cocoa bean and make good chocolate. I’m a bit of a purest, which is why I haven’t included flavours from the various spices found in Grenada. It’s a very special cocoa bean and the traditional idea was to bring out all the inherent flavours. We have opened a little shop called Bon Bon chocolates and that’s where we mix every kind of spice and fruit with our chocolate. We just released on a small scale and only available in Grenada a dry organic banana. We grow bananas on our coco farms and a lot of them are wasted so I recently started it up as a little side project.

Editor: What’s the relationship between you and the farmers and how do they benefit from joining your cooperative?

Mott: As well as paying them a higher rate than the Government, farmers also become major shareholders of the Grenada Chocolate Company. So far, all of our profits have gone into expansion, so there hasn’t been passive income as yet, but when there is it will be distributed to all the shareholders, which includes the farmers.

Editor: And what about this amazing woman Miss Nelice?

Mott: Miss Nelice is a pending member of the Grenadian Chocolate Company now, but it’s going to take another year for her to be certified as organic according to the regulations. As soon as that process is complete she will be one of our twelve member farms.

Editor: What has been the overall impact of the cooperative on the economy of Grenada?

Mott: There are about 100,000 people in Grenada, cocoa has been in decline so only a third of the people make a living from it. It’s slowly picking up because of the new popularity and the scarcity of Grenadian cocoa, which is considered one of the best in the world. Grenada exported 750 tons last year and we did 23 tons, so we want to keep growing and growing. When you include all the people that work in the factory on the farms and their families, we are about 40-50 strong and that makes a huge impact on the people directly involved. We still have a long way to go to change the country, but we have started making small changes in the coco sector in a significant way because we created an environment that is considered viable and safe for farmers to join. We just need the chocolate sales to match the production.

Extended Trailer:

Find out more about The Grenada Chocolate Company here