Sculpting the future of ethical cocoa

Meet Adam Geileskey: Head of Cocoa Innovation, part-time sculptor and the man with over 10 years’ experience working with our Ghanaian farmers.

“Look at this”, Adam says as soon as our Teams call connects. Lifting his phone to the webcam, he continues “I just finished it”. ‘It’ is a photo of rather charming clay figurine. Despite being somewhat hard to see in detail thanks to its digital journey via three screens, it’s discernibly an accomplished piece of work.

Is that what you do in your downtime? I ask. “Yeah” he replies, matter-of-factly. “The kids like it”.

As Head of Cocoa Innovation, Adam Geleiskey has more on his plate than sculpting figurines. Yet, fittingly, he has an evident creative streak that lends itself well to innovation in chocolate.

In conversation, he is playful, chatty, and approachable. Get him onto a subject he’s passionate about and he’ll do the rest. Today’s topic is certainly that: I’m here to ask him about ethical cocoa farming in Ghana. It’s a complex subject, and one which Adam has amassed a wealth of direct experience of.

Having joined Hotel Chocolat in 2007, he’s seen it all on the journey from plucky upstart to Britain’s largest independent retailer.

But what does ethical cocoa-sourcing have to do with cocoa innovation?

“You can’t make decent chocolate without decent ingredients.” Adam speaks succinctly and instinctively. “I have got a real interest in how we do the right thing, and that led me to Ghana where I learned about cocoa farming; what was happening, and how we might do things better. When it comes down to it, cocoa is our most important ingredient.”

Hotel Chocolat launched Gentle Farming Ghana in November 2021. It’s an ambitious new scheme that aims to improve the lives, lands and communities of all our farming partners.

But what prompted this, and why now?

“To understand that, you have to go all the way back to 2002. The work we’re doing with Gentle Farming may look brand new, but it’s essentially a continuation of what we’ve been doing for 20 years. 10 years ago, I got involved – when we raised money for a medical centre in Osuben. We started asking ourselves ‘how can we do more for Ghanaian farmers?’ In the beginning, we’d been supporting a small group of farmers by providing things like solar panels, seedlings, training and support. But the opportunity for buying cocoa directly from those farmers hadn’t seemed possible. We realised that it could be achievable if we worked with a local, approved vendor. This would enable us to connect the schemes we were running on the ground, for the farmers, with the buying process. We could be sure that we bought all the cocoa from the farmers we were supporting, at the right price. Having that extra bit of control enabled us to think bigger about how to improve things. We called this ‘Kookoo Kuapon, which means ‘excellence in cocoa’.”

It’s a learning process on all sides, then? Adam concurs, “Exactly. It’s always in review, we’re always learning new ways and methods. For example, we were really excited about Kookoo Kuapon, and we could see that it was empowering our farmers to earn themselves living income. But, after 3 or 4 years we realised we still needed to do more.”

Was this when ‘Gentle Farming’ was conceptualised, then?

“I guess you could say that.” Adam takes a sip of tea before continuing with the eloquent patter of a sharp mind in the groove.

“The big difference is that we were able to pay more and put more into on-farm labour. We’d learned that in order to earn a living income, farmers needed to have increased productivity. This can have consequences with things like child labour and sustainability issues, because farmers might be forced to take their kids out of school to help with the harvest, or to use farming methods that caused deforestation. It’s complex, and a lot of thought has gone into finding a solution that really works. This is how we got to Gentle Farming – or as it’s known in Ghana: Kakoo Daakyepa. It means ‘enlightened cocoa farming’. By supplying significant additional labour to prune and improve crops, we can encourage socially and environmentally superior farming practices that also make the farms more productive. Then, we buy that cocoa directly from our farmers at a much higher price. Of course, there will always be issues, as there is with anything in life, but we’re really optimistic about what we’ve brought to the table.”

Having recently celebrated 20 years working with the Green Tropics Group NGO, can you describe Hotel Chocolat’s relationship with them, and how this has evolved over time?

“It might sound trite, but it is a real partnership. It really is longstanding. Green Tropics Group are not an NGO like you might imagine from a Western perspective. It’s Robert and Steven, who were running Green Tropics before we had anything to do with it. They had full-time jobs and did Green Tropics part-time, as a way of giving back to their communities. It’s grown and evolved from there. They’ve both retired now but still choose to work on this with us. It’s a really great example of a partnership.”

So what’s next for Gentle Farming, and how will its effectiveness be measured? Adam has a typically straight answer. “We have a ‘boots on the ground’ approach – we don’t just pay and forget. We’ve been working on this for over 10 years, we go to Ghana every year at least once. We’ve got independents groups monitoring and assessing, and our scheme is assured by Price Waterhouse Cooper. We’ve tried to make this as watertight as possible.”

And what about the future? “How far can we take this?” Adam ponders his own question, “It’s never going to be finished, because we’ll always need more farmers, so that’s more people to support and train. What they need, and standards of living will evolve over time, and we’ll need to evolve with that.”

Adam is clearly emotionally invested in Ghanaian cocoa farming. It’s a passion, and one he clearly cares deeply about. Has being involved in cocoa production in West Africa for so long changed the way he thinks about chocolate in the West?

“Of course,” he says as I realize I’ve asked a daft question “There is a supply chain in everything – you need to look underneath the wrapper. We all want to enjoy great chocolate, but I’d rather eat less, enjoy it more and know what I’m doing is good rather than supporting a system that traps farmers in poverty and accelerates climate change.”

As Adam and some of the Hotel Chocolat team prepare to head out to Ghana, it’s an exciting time in the burgeoning story of Gentle Farming.