Chocolate: Worth Its Weight in Gold?

[marmar]

from the Independent UK:




Fancy a bit of chocolate? An afternoon Kit Kat with your cup of tea? A chunk of fruit and nut? Go on, you've earned it.

Except that in the future, chocoholics might have to work quite a bit harder to pay for their fix. The world could run out of affordable chocolate within 20 years as farmers abandon their crops in the global cocoa basket of West Africa, industry experts claim.

"Galaxy, Creme Eggs, every kind of £1 chocolate bar will be a thing of the past," warns London chocolatier Marc Demarquette, who believes a bar at £7, or its future equivalent, will be more like it. And Demarquette, who worked as an advisor for a recent BBC Panorama documentary on the troubled West African cocoa fields, is not alone. John Mason, executive director and founder of the Ghana-based Nature Conservation Research Council, has forecast that shortages in bulk production in Africa will have a devastating effect: "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."

The reason for this unimaginable shortage – which has been presaged by the doubling of cocoa prices in six years to an all-time high over the past three decades – is simple.

Farmers in the countries that produce the bulk of cocoa bought by the multinationals who control the market have found the crop a bitter harvest. The minimal rewards they have historically received do not provide incentives for the time-consuming work of replanting as their trees die off – a task that usually means moving to a new area of canopied forest and waiting three to five years for a new crop to mature. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/chocolate-worth-its-weight-in-gold-2127874.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. Talk about killing the goose that laid the golden eggs nt

[KamaAina]

2. Two words: fair trade

A world without chocolate is simply too frightening to contemplate. :scared:

[marmar]

3. Exactly.....If the corporate monsters would stop exploiting farmers, this would be a non-issue.

nt

[KamaAina]

4. "cocoa, which can only be grown in latitudes within 10 degrees of the equator,"

Oh, really? Mexico, one of the top ten producers, lies entirely north of 15 degrees north latitude.

Good to know the U.S. doesn't have a monopoly on sloppy reporting, especially sloppy scxence reporting, I guess.

[InkAddict]

5. Interesting info about the cacao tree

[Hannah Bell]

6. gold was over $1000 an oz last time i checked, so i doubt it.

speculation & commodity speculators.

[Canuckistanian]

9. Look what happened to the price of Tulips in 17th century Holland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
Speculators can jack up the price of a valued commodity to ridiculous levels.

[derby378]

7. Solution: fair trade chocolate

I've had some, and it's delicious, and it helps out the farmers who need it the most.

And it will help keep costs down in the long run.

Dig?

[AsahinaKimi]

8. MMMMmmmmmmmm

wants some naoH!!... :P~~~

[Freetradesucks]

10. Not going to happen..

If prices swing up, farmers will get back in the game. Supply and demand.

[marmar]

11. Farmers seem to rarely benefit from these upswings in prices. Only speculators do.

[Freetradesucks]

12. The fact of the matter is that

cocoa demand is not going to decrease. So if fewer farmers are producing it and the supply drops, the prices will increase. This will cause more farmers to cultivate it, hence increasing supply and the prices will drop again.

There may be a spike in cocoa prices, but it will correct itself.

[Toucano]

13. I hope my chocorat ration doesn't fall below 25 grams per week! n/t