Savor those Advent calendars, guys.
Two of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers, Mars, Inc. and Barry Callebaut, have some troubling news for basically everyone: the world is running out of chocolate. Cocoa farmers are producing less cocoa than the world eats—and we are headed toward the longest production shortfall in more than five decades, according to Bloomberg.
The Washington Post reports that the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced last year. And by 2020, we’ll likely eat 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase.
The shortage is due to several factors—namely drought and disease in West Africa, which accounts for 70 percent of the world’s cocoa output, as well as a not-so-fun fungal disease called frosty pod and China’s increased appetite for chocolate. And dark chocolate, which requires more cocoa to produce, has increased in popularity.
Some researchers are looking for innovative ways to increase production, like developing trees that can produce more beans than traditional cocoa trees. But Bloomberg says taste might be the compromise:
"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."
But consumers and corporations aren't the only ones the shortage will hurt. The problem uncovers the reality of cocoa farmers' reliance on the cocoa supply chain in order to make a living. Advocacy organization Oxfam International has been vocal about land-grabbing and the ethical treatment of West African cocoa farmers and says chocolate makers still need to do more to promote equality.
Image: Flickr Photo cc by John Loo
