How Government Meddles in Your Easter Chocolate

mises.org / Ryan McMaken / April 14, 2017

It’s Easter time again, which means it’s time to talk about chocolate. Simaran Sethi at the Los Angeles Times this week highlights the plight of cacao farmers:

What wasn’t factored into the celebration [over falling chocolate prices] is the deep suffering of the subsistence farmers who grow cacao, the seeds of a pod-shaped fruit that, once harvested, become the cocoa traded on the commodities market and destined for the chocolate eggs and bunnies that fill most Easter baskets.

It’s become somewhat obligatory in recent years to mention cacao farmers every Easter as consumers buy chocolate in especially large quantities. In 2015, for example, on Easter 2015, The Guardian noted:

In west Africa, cocoa workers scratch a living on small farms, usually no bigger than five hectares. Years of low incomes, uncertainty over land rights and ageing cocoa trees passing their most productive years have shaped an industry ravaged by poverty and child labour.1

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