Internasocial Society, economy of the next generation.
You mean international right? No. Well, yes, partly and entirely. It’s getting complicated now, from the start. So, internasocial is a aglomeration of the adjectives international and social, we put them together as one because they are inseparable. At least today that is. Think about tea, coffee, chocolate, and all other products we consume on a daily basis without ever wondering what the impact of our purchasing is on the daily lives of those producing these beautiful products. At Kitchenroots we believe that the choices we make when we buy these products, even as merely consumers in considerably small quantities, will directly impact the social welfare and well-being of everyone involved in the production process, including packaging and shipping, affecting the farmers and their families in particular of course. That is why we need to carefully select our products and be conscious about our choices. A concrete example will help you get a better understanding.
As a producer of chocolate and nut spreads with our own chocolate, we start our production from the raw cocoa beans, this means we need to roast, break and winnow them before we can initiate the process towards a sellable product. You can have a look at our other articles about chocolate if you care to know more about it: Chocolate, a bittersweet temptation unwrapped and Captain Chocolate, set sail for a cleaner bite. It somehow explains how we translate and apply the idea of an internasocial society in our business. Back to the raw cacao beans now. We have several choices to make before getting the beans to our modest production site; which origin do we use? how do we ship it to Belgium?, and how do we ship it to our workshop in Ghent? Over 70% of the global production of cocoa takes place in Western Afrika, in Ivory Coast and Ghana in particular. Unfortunately recent footage still reveals how children are forced to work in very aggressive conditions on the cocoa plantations, exploited without any hope or better future perspectives, abducted from their homes for the sake of money. Miki Mistrati wryly called his documentary {The dark side of chocolate}, we would say a sweet temptation with a rather bitter aftertaste, isn’t it?
That is why we insist on putting the emphasis on the social impact, because we believe that by meticulously selecting our origins, or cacao sources that is, we can improve the lives of the farmers and their families on the other side of the world. For the sake of the environment, do we need to stop eating chocolate, bananas, avocados and stop drinking coffee and tea? Of course not, but if we do so, let’s assure ourselves it doesn’t only serve ourselves and our indulgences. As an end-consumer it is not always easy to know, but that is why we opt to inform you ahead to save you precious time and effort. We can assure you that we do our very best to take into account our impact every step of the production chain, and we kindly invite you to send us your doubts, questions or remarks in order to guarantee a complete transparency.
This leads us to the reason why we like to talk from the “we” perspective, because without farmers we would have no ingredients to work with, neither would we without transporters, and without you as a consumer we would have no-one to sell our products to. Exactly, this is only possible if we think as a community or a team, being able to produce and sell is entirely relying on our internasocial collaboration.
Second, we don’t like to think and work solely within our confining geographical borders, our national identity is fading as soon as we understand that we only have one race on this vibrant planet. This being said we absolutely value and appreciate the rich cultural diversity between ethnicities, we even plead to protect and preserve it, but without implying in any way a racial supremacy or hierarchy. A friend, Bea, inspired us to think about the concept of chocolates without borders, very much in line with our beliefs…
Furthermore, it’s no secret any longer that distances have become obsolete in times where communication exceeds the pace of life. Plus, there lies a shared social and ecological responsibility in this idea of international trade, our expertise is oriented on the food chain, whereas the expertise of our transporters is focused on shipping. We try to the best of our abilities to minimise the distances of our ingredients, and follow the gait of the seasons. But we trust on our shipping partners to optimise their transportation with a minimal impact on the environment. One of our partners is taking this very seriously; our cacao beans of the Dominican Republic are shipped by Fair Transport all the way from the Caribbean with a sailing boat that navigates only on wind power. We support this idea and collect our merchandise at the Belgian seaside in Blankenberge and ride it back to Ghent by bike. Feel free to join us on this adventure, our wish is to make it a yearly event with our most sporty believers.
The last step in the food chain is you, how you apply the idea of internasocial society and which products you carefully select impact your lives and those of every step preceding this lovely moment of sharing a nice piece of chocolate with your beloved ones…
The heroes in the above pictures are only a handful of the many farmers and passionate craftsmen we’ve had the pleasure to meet on our different culinary adventures, but they represent all of them combined.
Comments
Well put, Charles.