The world's two biggest chocolate makers, Barry Callebaut and Mars Inc., have told the
Washington Post, and it has been picked up by a ton of other media, that there are many factors in the supply and demand problems facing chocolate.
Those factors include dry weather in the Ivory Coast and Ghana, countries which combine to produce over 70 percent of the cocoa used to produce chocolate, a fungal disease that's wiping out cocoa crops and farmers changing fields to crops that are easier to produce, like corn.
Equally troublesome is the fact that consumption of chocolate
has grown, and continues to. In 2013 the planet consumed some 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced and eventually the stock of cocao is gonna run out. Indeed, by 2030 that deficit, the industry says, could reach 2 million metric tons more consumed each year than produced.
If knowledge of this will help solve the problem then we might lick it. Here's an abbreviated list of media that's noted the decline of chocolate supply and increase in demand: The Huffington Post, Time, China Topix, AOL News, the Medical Daily, The Sidney Morning Herald, Gawker, The Toronto Star, Latina, U.S. Catholic News, FOX News, People Magazine and the Personal Finance Hub.
This story would appear, given the attention being paid to it, to be serious. In fact so worrying that we all may need some comfort food to get through it. Chocolate, anyone?
