From what I remember, mustard is prepared from the seed of the mustard plant, and common black pepper is a berry from a bush. I don’t understand how growing mustard and pepper can be commercially viable when the finished product costs so little. It seems like one would need a farm the size of California to produce enough pepper and/or mustard to make a decent living, and in any case, there seems to be many other more profitable crops. Does anyone know the reasons why and where pepper and mustard are grown??
Seth
It helps that incomes in third world countries are in the hundreds or low thousands of dollars(US) per year. Funny how people in America, Western Europe, etc. just won’t work for $5/day any more.
Use a good search engine, such as “Google.com” and you can find out where they are grown. And probably the answer to your original questions.
In addition to low wages in the 3rd world you also had to consider volume. If I sell 100 million pieces of 5 cent candy with a 1 cent profit on each one I’ll be rich. Also most un processed agricultural products sell for pennies a pound. Think of examples like corn, wheat, or rice.
Next time you’re at the store, look at the price per ounce on pepper. Compare to the price per ounce of any other non-spice product. That should answer your question right there.