The Fed Should Stop Pretending It’s Nostradamus

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Bring on the colored eggs, the jelly beans and the chocolate bunnies! But before you hunt down your treasures and sort them by color, or nibble on the chocobunnies’ ears and then, like me, bite off their heads, take a moment to consider what Amanda Little calls the “bitter new realities” underlying the supply chain behind this favored pastime. (I promise: There is a potential happy ending to this headless bunny story.) Avian flu has recently wiped out tens of millions of hens; in case you haven’t noticed, you’re also paying more for those sweet chocolate treats, a reflection of inflation writ large and environmental and economic pressures where cacao is cultivated. Increasingly hot and dry weather in cacao producers such as Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire feeds a vicious cycle, where growers chop down forests for more arable land, hastening more desertification. Meanwhile, consumers have been jonesing on cacao, which Little attributes to social media campaigns and pandemic binge eating — chocolate was responsible for the biggest part of the 2020-21 candy consumption surge. And it’s not as if all this cacao consumption is enriching poor African farmers: Low “farmgate” prices set by countries of origin have led to more than 1.5 million children working illegally to produce cacao in Western Africa.