The threat to the chocolate supply seems real enough without making believe it's a climate-change problem

Increasingly precious cocoa pods and beans: Are ordinary chocaholics in danger of being priced out of the chocolate market?

"'In 20 years chocolate will be like caviar. It will become so rare and so expensive that the average Joe just won't be able to afford it,' says one researcher."

-- from Stephen Messenger's TreeHugger post,

"Global Warming Could Lead to Vast Chocolate Shortage"

by Ken

I'm just catching up on this story via the indispensable AlterNet. But talk about scary.

I'm a little unsure about the post head, though. Messenger writes that "some experts are predicting that in a matter of decades a drop in production due to changing weather and agriculture incentives may make chocolate 'as expensive as gold.'" But it turns out that he has almost nothing to say about the role of climate change. This had me puzzled, since I associate the growing of cacao beans with tropical climates, and one thing I don't think anyone's predicting we're going to have any shortage of as the planet's climates change is tropical climates.

However, Messenger has a good deal to say about the economic disincentives to maintaining a robust affordable supply of the precious pods, and it's disturbing.

According to a report from The Independent, much of the world's cocoa is grown by farmers in West Africa -- and the world's collective sweet tooth may not be enough to make producing the crop worthwhile for them. One of the reasons has to do with just how labor-intensive cocoa production actually is. Cultivation of cocoa takes several years, as trees are slow to mature, not to mention they deplete the soil of nutrients in the process. Meanwhile, there's better money to be made elsewhere.

Tony Lass, chairman of the Cocoa Research Association, explains:

These smallholders earn just 80 cents a day. So there is no incentive to replant trees when they die off, and to wait up to five years for a new crop, and no younger generation around to do the replanting. The children of these African cocoa farmers, whose life expectancy is only 56, are heading for the cities rather than undertake backbreaking work for such a small reward.

Cocoa production also faces competition from other crops which farmers may find more financially appealing, like for palm-oil, driven by an increasing demand for biofuels, and rubber. Changes in weather patterns, too, have crippled production in places like Indonesia that might normally be there to pick up the slack.

[This last sentence is the only reference I find to the impact of climate change on the chocolate situation.]

"In the last few decades," Messenger writes, "these factors have already led to higher cocoa prices, but in the coming years they could put chocolate out of reach for the average consumer."

"Production will have decreased within 20 years to the point where we won't see any more cheap bars in vending machines," predicts Marc Demarquette, a British confectioner who a advised the BBC on a story about the coming chocolate crisis.

Actually, confectioner Demarquette had more to say in the underlying report by The Independent's Anthea Gertie.

"Production will have decreased within 20 years to the point where we won't see any more cheap bars in vending machines -- unless they are made with carob instead of chocolate," he says. "It's because the growers in West Africa only see 2p for every £1 bar. Even if you double that, it's no incentive for the next generation – which rightly expects decent working conditions. Those young people are heading for the cities. They won't stay around just so schoolchildren and commuters can continue to get their quick fix."

The good news for consumers is that cocoa, which can only be grown in latitudes within 10 degrees of the equator, is also being produced in South America, the Caribbean and Asia.

However Demarquette says it looks doubtful that those areas will be able to satisfy increased demand, "given the speed with which consumption is growing, with new markets like India and China coming along behind and following Western tastes".

There is already an upward trend in retail prices for quality chocolate, he notes: "With growers of premium cocoa beans already getting up to 45p per bar to look after their crops properly and fund their future, chocolate will go back to being what it used to be -- a rarefied treat."

Perhaps the world will be happy to live with that. Mintel figures released last month show that all the growth in the £3.6bn chocolate market is in the premium sector, which means chocoholics may well be prepared to dig ever deeper into their pockets for their fix.

"We are currently selling a 70g bar for £7 -- and the price will go up, as there is ever more demand for properly cultivated beans," says Demarquette.

"Of course," he adds, "there is all the difference in the world between decent chocolate and confectionery that is so full of sugar and palm oilthat it doesn't deserve to be called chocolate at all."

The Independent piece is worth checking out for the feeling in the upper end of the confection industry that up-market chocolate tastes will be the salvation of us, or at any rate of "foodies [willing to pay] whatever it takes for the good stuff." She quotes Sara Jayne Stanes, chair of the UK Academy of Chocolate:

"Over the past 10-15 years, growing curiosity and interest in the fine-chocolate end of the market has created an understanding of how it is different from chocolate confectionery," she says. Consumers must appreciate that "fine chocolate, like fine wine, will cost considerably more, as cocoa farmers stop leaving the land in search of better-paid jobs in the cities. The result will be more careful cultivation of the crops, and a greater supply of fine cocoas."

Ah, the market!

Messenger for his part reports, "Experts say that changes in agricultural practices may very well avoid a chocolate crisis." The only example he cites, the Fair Trade initiative, appears picked up from the Independent, where interestingly the "expert" in question is an unnamed spokesman from Cadbury's.

"Together with other manufacturers and the wider cocoa industry, we have been working on a number of agricultural initiatives to both increase and improve yields," he says. "Our move into Fair Trade was a separate step, to both pay a better price to farmers, and to encourage the next generation of cocoa farmers to stay within the industry."

The crisis may well be averted in Ghana, Cadbury's supply heartland and the world's second largest producer, according to Divine Chocolate, a Ghanaian manufacturer that is 45 per cent owned by a cooperative of 45,000 cocoa farmers. "The Fair Trade system helps ensure that the value of farming is delivered directly to the farmers and their communities," says its managing director Sophi Tranchell.

"The best route for sustainability is for farmers to organise themselves into larger units, to be able to manage their own farming improvements through improved remuneration, and to put them in a position where they have more influence in the cocoa supply chain. Why else should they continue?" She believes Divine Chocolate has found the right recipe: "Fairtrade – and particularly the Divine ownership model – delivers sustainability into the hands of the farmers, not the hands of the global buyers."

Unfortunately, fair trade doesn't exist in the Ivory Coast, "by far the world's largest source of cocoa." Nestlé has a tree-replanting project under way, but, says Abidjan-based reporter Ange Aboa,

these are only for the cooperatives with whom they work, and the replanting will make up for about a quarter of the trees which have been lost. Their goal is to buy only from the cooperatives in future, and not top up by buying from local exporters.

It is, all in all, a grim outlook for the world's future chocolate supply, even as demand keeps growing by leaps and bounds. A grim enough outlook that I wonder if this really needs to be tricked up as a climate-change story.

#