Today in people not understanding markets

We’re not in favour of child labour in cocoa plantations. But we’d also like to point out that paying farmers more isn’t the solution.

Joanna Ewart-James, executive director of Freedom United, an international organisation campaigning against child labour in the cocoa supply chain, said: “Child slavery and child labour have plagued the industry in Côte d’Ivoire and Ghana – which produce 60% of the world’s cocoa – for decades. Cocoa farmers are not earning an income that enables them to recruit the labour they need.”

That doesn’t make sense.

The campaign group says Mondelēz has invested in community initiatives to combat child labour but, along with other leading companies, needs to pay farmers more money for its cocoa.

Nor does that, nor does this:

Martin Short, president of the World Cocoa Foundation, said: “Dealing with child labour abuses as a standalone issue will never work until we deal with the root cause of child labour, which is farmer poverty.”

The farmers find child labour profitable. So, if the price paid to farmers rises they will still employ child labour and increase their profits.

Child labour is, per hour, of course less productive than adult labour. What makes it profitable is that child labour is considerably cheaper, making productivity as measured by the wage bill equal or better than that of adult labour.

Paying the farmers more does not solve this. Making child labour more expensive does. Given that it’s already illegal then more laws about it don’t help. What is necessary is that the place become richer - not the farmers, the place - so that parents won’ t send their children out to work.

As has happened everywhere else, the cure for child labour is an industrial revolution. Which also means the killing off of smallholding peasant farming - because people are making so much more in that industrial society.