The article discusses the increase in the price of Halloween candy due to the rising costs of crucial ingredients such as sugar and cocoa. It attributes this price hike to factors like low rainfall in key regions like Mexico, India, and West Africa, resulting in poor harvests for sugar and cocoa. The prices of candy bars and packs of gum have surged by 7.5 percent from last year, driven by the soaring costs of chocolate and sugar, which have reached their highest levels in global wholesale markets in decades. The United States, reliant on sugar imports from Mexico, has witnessed a more than 15 percent decrease in sugar production due to drought conditions. Furthermore, the article highlights that while sugar is a more forgiving ingredient, as the industry can rely on sugar beets in case of sugar cane scarcity, cocoa, primarily grown in equatorial regions, has experienced severe price hikes due to increased demand and shorter crops. Our senior sugar analyst John Stansfield said “The U.S. candy consumer is essentially paying the price for poor crops in Mexico and also Asia”.

Source : www.nytimes.com