From Washington Post
There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much
chocolate, all of you. And it's getting so out of hand that the world could be
headed towards a potentially disastrous (if you love chocolate) scenario if it
doesn't stop.
Those are, roughly speaking, the words of two huge chocolate
makers, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut. And there's some data to back them up.
Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than
the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what
could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50
years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from
year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate
roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two
chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a
more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2
million metric tons.
The problem is, for one, a supply issue. Dry weather in West
Africa (specifically in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, where more than 70 percent
of the world's cocoa is produced) has greatly decreased production in the
region. A nasty fungal disease known as frosty pod hasn't helped either. The
International Cocoa Organization estimates it has wiped out between 30 percent
and 40 percent of global cocoa production. Because of all this, cocoa farming
has proven a particularly tough business, and many farmers have shifted to more
profitable crops, like corn, as a result.
Then there's the world's insatiable appetite for chocolate.
China's growing love for the stuff is of particular concern. The Chinese are
buying more and more chocolate each year. Still, they only consume per capita
about 5 percent of what the average Western European eats. There's also the
rising popularity of dark chocolate, which contains a good deal more cocoa by
volume than traditional chocolate bars (the average chocolate bar contains
about 10 percent, while dark chocolate often contains upwards of 70 percent).
For these reasons, cocoa prices have climbed by more than 60
percent since 2012, when people started eating more chocolate than the world
could produce. And chocolate makers have, in turn, been forced to adjust by
raising the price of their bars. Hershey's was the first, but others have
followed suit.
Efforts to counter the growing imbalance between the amount
of chocolate the world wants and the amount farmers can produce has inspired a
bit of much needed innovation. Specifically, an agricultural research group in
Central Africa is developing trees that can produce up to seven times the
amount of beans traditional cocoa trees can. The uptick in efficiency, however,
might be compromising taste, says Bloomberg's Mark Schatzker. He likens the
trade-off to other mass-produced commodities.
Efforts are under way to make chocolate cheap and abundant
-- in the process inadvertently rendering it as tasteless as today’s
store-bought tomatoes, yet another food, along with chicken and strawberries,
that went from flavorful to forgettable on the road to plenitude.
It's unclear anyone will mind a milder flavor if it keeps
prices down. And the industry certainly won't mind, so long as it keeps the
potential for a gargantuan shortage at bay.
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