It’s almost Christmas! Time to break out the chocolate treats. But hold up. Is that candy you’re eating . . . illegal?

An Associated Press investigation found a dark truth about chocolate. Several major chocolate companies receive cocoa beans from illegal farms.

In Nigeria, men trudge through weeds with machetes (muh-SHEH-tees). They’re careful not to cut the precious yellow pods growing nearby. Those football-shaped growths contain cocoa beans. Soon, the beans will become smooth, sugary, and lucrative chocolate. (Lucrative means worth money.)

There’s just one problem. These trees grow in the Omo Forest Reserve. Here, the government bans farming. But cocoa plantations still expand into the forbidden forest.

Omo is one of Africa’s oldest and largest UNESCO Biosphere Reserves. The United Nations sets aside these sites to preserve nature. The Omo reserve protects critically endangered African forest elephants. Cute-but-threatened pangolins also roam the preserve. Scientists once believed white-throated monkeys were extinct. Here, those monkeys swing through the trees.

But now farmers rip up those native trees. In their place, they plant cacao (kuh-KOW).  This evergreen tree produces the pods that contain cocoa beans.

Those cocoa beans go to distributors. Some may end up at companies like Mars Inc., creator of M&Ms. Some may go to Ferrero, the company that brings you Nutella. The beans get roasted, ground, and mixed with milk and sugar to make chocolate.

Will the illegal beans find their way into your Christmas goodies? It’s hard to say. The cocoa supply chain is twistier than Willy Wonka’s chocolate river. Companies use many methods to make sure their cocoa beans come from legal sources. Those methods sometimes fail.

But why grow cacao on illegal land?

The world’s chocolate appetite keeps growing. Experts expect the global chocolate market to increase by $20 billion in six years. That’s a lot of Hershey bars!

Cocoa farmers also say they need fresh farmland. When most people think of cocoa beans, they think of sugary snacks. But to cocoa farmers, these beans mean real food on the table. They rely on farming for their livelihood.

“We know this is a forest reserve,” says cocoa farmer Kehinde Kumayo. “But if you are hungry, you go to where there is food, and this is very fertile land.”

God cares for the poor and hungry. But He also tells us to obey our government and steward the Earth well. The Omo Forest Reserve protects a threatened piece of God’s creation. That’s worth more than a Mars bar. But how does it compare to a family’s hunger?

Look at the birds of the air: They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? — Matthew 6:26