Mars, Inc. and Swiss-based chocolate maker Barry Callebaut said that there could be less and less chocolate to eat in the near future-all because the world is eating too much of it.
Last year, the world consumed 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced, in what is termed as a "chocolate deficit," where farmers produced less cocoa than the world eats.
The world has long past been in a state of chocolate deficit-over 50 years already and it seems like the world's ravenous appetite will not go down though, according to the two big chocolate makers themselves, by 2020, that number could shoot up 1 million metric tons; by 2030, the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.
Chocolate lovers may already be cringing right now, and may have more reason to worry since Ghana and the Ivory Coast in Africa, where 70 percent of the world's cocoa comes from has significantly decreased production following unfavourable conditions like dry weather, and a more serious fungus called "frosty pod" that has wiped out between 30 to 40 percent of global cocoa production.
As a result, cocoa farmers are opting out of the chocolate business and choosing to plant more profitable crops like corn instead.
To make it worse, there's the world's insatiable appetite for chocolate. In China, for example, Chinese are buying more and more chocolate every year, though their consumption is just a fraction of the amount (about 5 percent) Western Europeans eat.
Aside from that, the increasing popularity of dark chocolate, which has more cocoa than your average traditional chocolate is of growing concern in this issue of chocolate shortage.
Dark chocolate contains 70 percent or more cocoa than average chocolate which has only 10 percent.
Because of all these reasons, chocolate prices have shoot up over 60 percent since 2012, with Hershey's being the first to increase their prices.
What can possibly done to prevent our favorite chocolate from vanishing the surface of the Earth, you say?
Washington Post reports that an agricultural research group based in Central Africa has been working to produce cocoa trees that can produce seven times the amount of cocoa beans the average cocoa tree can.
However, mass-produced commodities come with a bitter cost-compromised taste.
"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," says Mark Schatzker, a correspondent from Bloomberg.
