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Estimating the economic incentives necessary for eliminating child labor in Ghanaian cocoa production.

ABSTRACT: Concerns about the use of child labor in West African cocoa production became widespread in the early 2000s in many high-income countries. In 2015 in Ghana, 91.8% (or a total of 878,595) of the children working in the cocoa sector were involved in a form of hazardous work. Child labor in cocoa production is not just a symptom of poverty but also a contributing factor, as children often forgo a formal education to work in cocoa orchards. Current Ghanaian law prohibits child labor, but, with many cocoa households living in poverty, child labor becomes a necessity for survival, and as such, current child labor laws are rarely enforced. Therefore, an effective policy that eliminates child labor could compensate farmers by providing an economic incentive. In this paper, we develop and calibrate a farm household model to estimate the cocoa price premium necessary to eliminate child labor from cocoa production while leaving the farm household welfare unchanged. This welfare-neutral price premium removes the negative effects of eliminating child labor for the farm household. Varying degrees of child labor exists, with certain forms posing a greater risk to children's wellbeing. The results show that eliminating the worst forms of child labor would require a cocoa price premium of 2.81% and eliminating regular work (non-hazardous work but over the maximum hours allowed for a child) and the worst forms would require an 11.81% premium, which could be paid for by the well-established Ghanaian Cocoa Marketing Board. An incentive for the Cocoa Marketing Board to pay the price premium and monitor and enforce this policy would be the ability to differentiate their cocoa as child-labor free and not lose market share to countries who cannot currently certify this practice.

SUBMITTER: Luckstead J

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6555545 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Estimating the economic incentives necessary for eliminating child labor in Ghanaian cocoa production.

Luckstead Jeff J Tsiboe Francis F Nalley Lawton L LL

PloS one 20190607 6

Concerns about the use of child labor in West African cocoa production became widespread in the early 2000s in many high-income countries. In 2015 in Ghana, 91.8% (or a total of 878,595) of the children working in the cocoa sector were involved in a form of hazardous work. Child labor in cocoa production is not just a symptom of poverty but also a contributing factor, as children often forgo a formal education to work in cocoa orchards. Current Ghanaian law prohibits child labor, but, with many ...[more]

PMID: 31173598

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Cocoa butter (CB) extracted from cocoa beans (Theobroma cacao) is the main raw material for chocolate production, but CB supply is insufficient due to the increased chocolate demand and limited CB production. CB is mainly composed of three different kinds of triacylglycerols (TAGs), 1,3-dipalmitoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol (POP, C16:0-C18:1-C16:0), 1-palmitoyl-3-stearoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol (POS, C16:0-C18:1-C18:0) and 1,3-distearoyl-2-oleoyl-glycerol (SOS, C18:0-C18:1-C18:0). In general, Saccharomyces cerevisiae produces TAGs as storage lipids, which consist of C16 and C18 fatty acids. However, cocoa butter-like lipids (CBL, which are composed of POP, POS and SOS) are not among the major TAG forms in yeast. TAG biosynthesis is mainly catalyzed by three enzymes: glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase (GPAT), lysophospholipid acyltransferase (LPAT) and diacylglycerol acyltransferase (DGAT), and it is essential to modulate the yeast TAG biosynthetic pathway for higher CBL production. RESULTS:We cloned seven GPAT genes and three LPAT genes from cocoa cDNA, in order to screen for CBL biosynthetic gene candidates. By expressing these cloned cocoa genes and two synthesized cocoa DGAT genes in S. cerevisiae, we successfully increased total fatty acid production, TAG production and CBL production in some of the strains. In the best producer, the potential CBL content was eightfold higher than the control strain, suggesting the cocoa genes expressed in this strain were functional and might be responsible for CBL biosynthesis. Moreover, the potential CBL content increased 134-fold over the control Y29-TcD1 (IMX581 sct1? ale1? lro1? dga1? with TcDGAT1 expression) in strain Y29-441 (IMX581 sct1? ale1? lro1? dga1? with TcGPAT4, TcLPAT4 and TcDGAT1 expression) further suggesting cocoa GPAT and LPAT genes functioned in yeast. CONCLUSIONS:We demonstrated that cocoa TAG biosynthetic genes functioned in S. cerevisiae and identified cocoa genes that may be involved in CBL production. Moreover, we found that expression of some cocoa CBL biosynthetic genes improved potential CBL production in S. cerevisiae, showing that metabolic engineering of yeast for cocoa butter production can be realized by manipulating the key enzymes GPAT, LPAT and DGAT in the TAG biosynthetic pathway.

Dataset Information

Estimating the economic incentives necessary for eliminating child labor in Ghanaian cocoa production.

Publications

Estimating the economic incentives necessary for eliminating child labor in Ghanaian cocoa production.

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