The Race to Save the World’s Chocolate
Mother Jones
This story originally appeared in the Atlantic and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Blame climate change. Or pestilence. Or China’s Westernizing taste in candy. Blame, perhaps, Ebola.
Regardless, the world is running out of chocolate. In 2013, the world consumed about 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. And now, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut—two of the world’s biggest manufacturers of chocolate goods—are warning that by 2020, that consumption-over-production number could increase to 1 million metric tons (a fourteen-fold bump). “Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm,” The Washington Post reported. We are in the midst of what may be “the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years” and analysts say it’s only going to get worse.
What will that mean for the average chocoholic? Chocolate could not only become more expensive; confectioners could also start extending their chocolate supplies by combining cacao with other ingredients like vegetable fat and flavor chemicals.
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