Ben Muse: Where do we get our chocolate?

Ben Muse: Where do we get our chocolate?: "Just in time for Valentines Day, the Progressive Policy Institute's Trade Fact of the Week reports on the flow of chocolate and chocolate products in world trade: Seventy Percent of the World's Cocoa Comes from West Africa .

Lots on chocolate, but even a little something about vanilla:

What about vanilla? Somehow vanilla has lost its earlier reputation as an aphrodisiac and become a synonym for 'boring.' But vanilla is not boring. It is, among other things, one of the world's four most expensive foods. (Depending on the harvest, vanilla beans can cost anywhere from $40 to $200 per kilo; even the low prices are 30 times the $1.40/kilo price of cocoa beans.) Like chocolate, vanilla is native to Central America and the Amazon, but now grown mainly in Africa and Indonesia. Madagascar is the world's top producer; every flower is hand-pollinated, since the bee that normally does the job is found only in Central and South America."