[My Reflections from Afar] Another Sponsored World Cocoa Foundation's 2025 Partnership Meeting Just Ended

why justice always seems to need a stage, a microphone, and a corporate sponsor to be heard.

From São Paulo to the Farm Gate: Reflections from a Farmer’s Son

Photos and a renewed sense of purpose, Kitkat, etc., were some of the images and messages that were wandering LinkedIn.

When I first came across the announcement for the World Cocoa Foundation’s 2025 Partnership Meeting in São Paulo, Brazil, my heart sank, not because I didn’t care about progress, but because I understood all too well what these conversations usually mean. Another year, another global gathering to discuss “what a fair price is for cocoa farmers.”

Meanwhile, no one travels halfway across the world to study the income trends of Mondelez’s CEO or the marketing manager at Nestlé. Their earnings don’t require a panel. Their salaries aren’t debated at international conferences. Their performance doesn’t need a living income threshold defined by NGOs. And yet, for my father and others like him, cocoa farmers who rise before dawn and sweat in the fields from planting to harvest, the question of what they should earn still hangs in the air like a mystery too complex to solve without multiple PowerPoint decks and policy papers.

Scrolling through LinkedIn, I caught snippets from the WCF 2025 event. Big panels. Fancy banners. Buzzwords like “volatility,” “resilience,” and “sustainability.” But the real giveaway was in the sponsor lineup: Hershey, Nestlé, Mondelez, Mars Wrigley, and Ferrero, the very corporations that already determine their own prices, margins, and profits without interference.