The villages outside the hometown of my girlfriend in Japan, is full of abandoned little houses with bath-towel-sized "farms". The documentaries are full of "today's kids don't want to be farmers" stuff. Always mentioning the kids can earn better money *not* being a farmer, but often not connecting the two.
It's also my response whenever some grifter complains about the lack of ethnic minorities in the British countryside. The *ENTIRE* *PURPOSE* their parents moved to this country to was to *ESCAPE* a life of scraping subsitance from the soil.
"Wages doin’ summat else are too high". This is Baumol's cost disease, isn't it?
It's why we're going to need robots to look after us when we're old. And robots to pick cocoa beans. And as optimistic as I am, developing such technology doesn't seem like a law of nature in the way that, say, incentives from the disparity between demand and supply do.
Diabetic chocco and dog choccie drops, definitely. Carob also grows wild around where I am.... not worth collecting, last time we looked a 10k bag of the pods paid €4.50 at the collecction point.
Way off my knowledge base. But I think the problem will be that different cocoas are very different (apparently Venezuelan is the really top notch stuff) which would seem to imply that it's really a mixture of many very slightly different things providing the aroma and taste? If that makes sense?
Interesting, I did not know that was the reason (though I count myself as someone not ignorant of the principle you're writing about). I thought it was just the general trend of post-disruption and money printing inflation plus the weather. Certainly the chocolate I buy (Lindt) has near doubled in price by this stage from 5 years ago.
I would introduce a caveat here. One that applies to pretty much everything I say. I am not a believer in unicauses. The reason something happens is always reasons, not a reason. So when I say "this happens because" then my real statement, the one I'll defend very strongly, is "This is one of the reasons this is happening", and not so much "This is the only reason etc".
I am, after all, writing on Substack, not the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
But given that, yes, cocoa is a peasant product and the peasants are getting richer therefore there's a shortage of those willing to be cocoa producing peasants.
The villages outside the hometown of my girlfriend in Japan, is full of abandoned little houses with bath-towel-sized "farms". The documentaries are full of "today's kids don't want to be farmers" stuff. Always mentioning the kids can earn better money *not* being a farmer, but often not connecting the two.
It's also my response whenever some grifter complains about the lack of ethnic minorities in the British countryside. The *ENTIRE* *PURPOSE* their parents moved to this country to was to *ESCAPE* a life of scraping subsitance from the soil.
"Wages doin’ summat else are too high". This is Baumol's cost disease, isn't it?
It's why we're going to need robots to look after us when we're old. And robots to pick cocoa beans. And as optimistic as I am, developing such technology doesn't seem like a law of nature in the way that, say, incentives from the disparity between demand and supply do.
Fascinating stuff!
If we can produce meat in a lab, which is allegedly (not that I’ve sampled it) indistinguishable from the real thing, can cocoa be similarly produced?
Possibly;
https://biobeat.nigms.nih.gov/2020/02/the-chemistry-of-chocolate/ for some of the compounds;
And there's this mob;
https://www.cacultured.com/how-it-works
Presumably, there are others. No idea.
The "normal" substitute (coated flapjacks in motorway service stations) is carob.
Diabetic chocco and dog choccie drops, definitely. Carob also grows wild around where I am.... not worth collecting, last time we looked a 10k bag of the pods paid €4.50 at the collecction point.
The only reason I know (ha!) anything about it is the diabetic one, from about 40 odd years ago.
Funny, just don't see the dog stuff on the shelves these days.
Way off my knowledge base. But I think the problem will be that different cocoas are very different (apparently Venezuelan is the really top notch stuff) which would seem to imply that it's really a mixture of many very slightly different things providing the aroma and taste? If that makes sense?
This is what Mr. Google tells me: https://damecacao.com/artificial-chocolate-flavor-fake/
Interesting, I did not know that was the reason (though I count myself as someone not ignorant of the principle you're writing about). I thought it was just the general trend of post-disruption and money printing inflation plus the weather. Certainly the chocolate I buy (Lindt) has near doubled in price by this stage from 5 years ago.
I would introduce a caveat here. One that applies to pretty much everything I say. I am not a believer in unicauses. The reason something happens is always reasons, not a reason. So when I say "this happens because" then my real statement, the one I'll defend very strongly, is "This is one of the reasons this is happening", and not so much "This is the only reason etc".
I am, after all, writing on Substack, not the Quarterly Journal of Economics.
But given that, yes, cocoa is a peasant product and the peasants are getting richer therefore there's a shortage of those willing to be cocoa producing peasants.