There isn't much monopoly that I've ever seen. There are some huge chocolate traders and companies out there. Many have the resources to create hedges so that the market doesn't affect them in the same way it does smaller producers. However, the chocolate business is pretty competitive. There are many brokers and in country cocoa traders. If one cocoa trader isn't paying the farmers as much as another, the farmers will switch. The farmers are typically poor so they don't feel as tied to loyalty as they might otherwise and they follow the price paid. The bigger problem is simply that Hershey's (as an example) has a low-end chocolate bar that they have to run all the ingredients and final products through the supply chain all to have a bar that is $1.00 (or so --- I don't keep track of their price as I don't eat the stuff) by the time it reaches the final customer. This means that they can only offer a price so high to make the numbers work.
So it is about educating the customer so that they will pay more. We (as a company) try to help educate the farmers and help them increase the quality of their cocoa. (Most of the world's cocoa is amazingly poor quality). If the farmers increase the quality of their cocoa, they can charge more. Hopefully, we will get to buy it when they do improve the quality. With good quality cocoa, the farmers can always charge less if they choose or if they have to. With poor quality cocoa, they can never charge more. Quality provides options for the farmers and in my experience really helps improve the self image of the farmers which is an amazing thing to see.
Funny
Actually, Hershey's does taste like baby vomit. When Hershey's started, they'd ship in the milk by rail car. By the time that it got to Hershey's (which wasn't that long actually), it had started to spoil. This would create butyric acid -- the primary acid in vomit and is responsible for much of vomits flavor. Today, it isn't made with spoiled milk and the butyric acid is made by treating the milk with enzymes.
So yes, it does taste like baby vomit. Good call. I do have to ask though
Probably the best widely available chocolate would be Guittard. Guittard is run by Gary Guittard and it was started by his great grandfather in San Francisco during the gold rush. I'm personally good friends with Gary and I know where they buy their beans (not all of them but enough so that I have a good sense as to what is paid and we buy from some of the same farmers.) Guittard buys some very premium cocoas (and some lower grade too.) For their premium cocoas, they pay premium prices. Gary (along with myself) are founding members of Direct Cacao an organization that was set up to promote the direct trade of cocoa with the farmers to help ensure that farmers get paid enough to keep cocoa a viable crop and to help keep quality up.
Lindt actually owns Ghiraldelli which is funny. When you buy San Francisco Chocolate, you are actually buying swiss. I'm familiar where they get some of their beans and their beans generally aren't particularly good quality. Their Madagascar chocolate is made with some of the lowest quality cocoas from Madagascar for example -- they couldn't buy their cocoa from the better growers for example Akkeson's plantation where we, Valrhona, and many of the europoean manufacturers buy their cocoa from.
Chocolate brands to look out for would be IMHO: Michel Cluizel, Pralus, Amedei, Domori, Valrhona (though they don't us as good cocoa as they used to). In the US, I'd look at companies such as Guittard (the big one) and smaller ones such as Amano, Theo, Patric, Rogue, Dandelion, Askinosie, Taza, Ritual, Dick Taylor, Fresco, Patomic, etc. There is a new movement in the US for craft chocolate making much in the same way the beer industry went a few years ago. These companies (and others) are at the forefront and many of their owners truly care about what they are doing and the farmers they work with. Among many of these companies is the desire to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. I've been immensely proud to hear how the owners all want to pay the farmers more. Gary Guittard in one of our Direct Cacao meetings got up and specifically said: "We all need to pay even more to the farmers." I was so proud to be part of a movement where this was being said. The biggest hurdle is to educate the public so that chocolate isn't seen as just another commodity so that the public is willing to pay enough that we can pass that along to the farmers as we would like.
"The one charm of marriage is that it makes a life of deception a neccessity." - Oscar Wilde