This is a hard issue for me to thumb my nose at. Child labor was the historic norm for all pre-industrial societies. And to a degree, child labor is still practiced in Western agriculture - ask anyone who grew up in a farming community.
As far as I understand, the majority of chocolate production in places in Africa is still people hauling sacks of cacao into a market to be hauled away by middlemen. The only real immediate solution is to industrialize the supply chain (corporately managed plantations and processing plants), or stop consuming products from these regions altogether.
Similar: "Cocoa harvested by kids as young as 5 in Ghana" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38491826 111 points 67 days ago
The bitter reality is that in a primary agricultural household economy, there will be child labor. This has been the case through history, and even in the United States the child labor laws exempt work on a family farm. The economics just really don’t work out otherwise.
If in a fit of “virtue” we decide to ban that without taking the economic realities into consideration, you are likely to make it far worse. Living with your family and working with them harvesting cocoa is far better than starving, begging, or prostitution.
Samee with Coffee beans.
John Oliver covered this issue last year as well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwHMDjc7qJ8
Chocolate brand largely focused around child labor and exploitation in chocolate production: https://tonyschocolonely.com/us/en/our-mission