Secondary Geography - Fair or unfair trade

In this lesson, students find out how cocoa is grown and processed to make chocolate and consider whether cocoa farmers’ lives can be improved by Fairtrade. Students begin by using Google Search and Images to find out what chocolate is made from, what the crop looks like and how it is farmed. They find out where in the world it is grown and then use Google Earth or Maps to look at these countries and where they are in relation to the UK. They are introduced to the idea of food miles and use Google Earth’s ‘ruler’ tool to find out how far chocolate has to travel to reach the UK by plane and by sea. They compare how far it travels from different countries and consider which is the most environmentally friendly to import from. The lesson goes on to look at the key people involved in the cocoa trade. Students research the lives of cocoa farmers in Ghana using Google Search and Images to find out about how they grow and harvest cocoa, how much they earn for the cocoa they produce and how this compares to the cost of a chocolate bar in the UK. They are introduced to the idea of Fairtrade and use Google News to find recent articles about Fairtrade and the issues. Using the Fair Trade Certified Global Awareness layer in Google Earth, they can read information about many different Fairtrade cooperatives; from cocoa farmers in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, to coffee farmers in South America and tea farmers in India.