WASHINGTON — It’s a precious natural resource that’s running out fast, and
that could cause panic in the population. It’s not gasoline or heating oil;
it’s chocolate.
Two enormous chocolate makers — the candy producer Mars Inc. and the cocoa
butter maker Barry Callebaut — say that chocolate supplies are running low,
and prices are going up.
Does this mean chocolate will disappear, or become an unaffordable luxury? A
black market for dark chocolate? Well, it’s not that bad, the Washington
Post’s Roberto Ferdman told WTOP on Monday. But the “chocolate deficit” is
growing: 70,000 metric tons this year, and possibly 1 million by 2020.
It’s a problem of both supply and demand, Ferdman says: “We’re eating a lot
more chocolate than we used to … and we’re not producing enough.”
For one thing, more people are eating chocolate — consumption has gone up
recently, though it’s still dwarfed by the West’s love of the stuff — but
changing tastes have a lot to do with it too. Dark chocolate is becoming much
more popular, and it has a much higher cocoa content than milk chocolate. “If
you eat the same amount of dark chocolate as you would milk chocolate, you’re
eating more cocoa. … It’s not just that you like it, or I like it; it’s that a
lot of people like dark chocolate today.”
Chocolate producers are feeling a pinch too. The West African countries of
Ivory Coast and Ghana, which produce about 75 percent of chocolate exports,
are battling droughts and a fungal disease called frosty pod, Ferdman says.
Central and South America are trying to step up production, he adds, with the
help of technology. They’ve begun to produce a more efficient cocoa tree,
which produces at seven times the rate of a normal tree. Ferdman says that one
analyst reports that the new efficiency might could at the cost of some
flavor, though.
Ferdman says in the Post that cocoa prices have risen by more than 60 percent
since 2012. He doubts that it will ever be such a luxury that average people
won’t be able to afford it, but your future consumption may depend on “how
much money you’re willing to spend.”
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