Savour that chocolate while you can still afford it

[Newsjock]

Source: The Globe and Mail

In the not-too-distant future, chocolate will become a rarefied luxury, as expensive as caviar.

John Mason, a Canadian expert on cocoa, first made this prophesy six years ago from his base in West Africa, the epicentre of production. He was confident enough to repeat it, over and over, to the directors of the biggest chocolate companies in the world.

... Today they treat him like a guru. An influential set of senior industry heavyweights flew to Ghana last week to hear him speak; the talk ended with an unprecedented agreement between industry competitors and the government to establish a working group that will map out a sustainable future. It is the first such agreement of its kind in the cocoa world.

... The industry has been ignoring a looming supply problem, one that’s been brought into sharp focus by a political eruption in Ivory Coast, the world’s top cocoa-producing nation.

... The uncertainty has set off panic among global chocolate powerbrokers. Their worry is less about this year’s harvest, 70 per cent of which has already been extracted (the season runs from October to February); the concern is over next year’s crop – and the years that follow. Regardless of how much they can pay for increasingly expensive cocoa – futures hit a 30-year price high last month – there will simply not be enough produced.

Read more: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/valentines-day/savour-that-chocolate-while-you-can-still-afford-it/article1904608/singlepage/#articlecontent

[gateley]

1. I heard this recently from another source, too. I think it was referred to in

the mainstream media somewhere that cacao supplies were going to be affected.

Damn.

[BlueJazz]

2. It won't bother me...I don't like....sniff...chocolate..

[FreeState]

3. Actually the article is being a bit disingenuous...

The amount of chocolate produced by all companies outside of Hershey Chocolate in a whole year is equal to the amount Hershey's produces in one day. (I dont have a link for this, but I just toured the only organic whole been to bar chocolate factory in America where I learned this).

So what we are going to see it the downfall of a monopoly - one that makes some of the worst chocolate in the world. Almost all those other companies have their own farms and sources of chocolate outside of where the beans the article are talking about.

[pacalo]

8. Thanks for the info. I began thinking about baking supplies going up, too. Whew!

[bhikkhu]

4. Fascinating. Slave-wages, climate change, disease-ridden monoculture, soil depletion -

I'm sure if the price goes up, however, it will be blamed here on the greed of speculators.

All sarcasm aside, if the price needs to go up to make the growing of chocolate something other than the equivalent of slave labor, then let the price go up. The same goes for every other commodity grown or manufactured under conditions of grinding poverty, chiefly for the ease and comfort of wealthy nations. If we have to do with less to allow some measure of fairness and dignity elsewhere, so be it.

[wtmusic]

6. Cocoa doesn't subject its growers to grinding poverty -

it lifts them from it. Without cocoa many small African communities have nothing, and they would quite literally starve.

If the price goes up, it will be by the simple law of supply-and-demand: less cocoa = higher prices. The farmers won't make an extra penny, and because of difficulty of getting their product to market most will make less.

[bhikkhu]

10. according to the OP it does.

it says that young people are abandoning the farming of cocoa in the Ivory Coast because it carries the stigma of poverty, and the decrease in production is one reason for a shortage. I suppose who benefits from higher prices depends on how the market is structured, who owns the land, etc.

[wtmusic]

11. Correct, my bad.

Note to self: read the whole article. :blush:

[Edweird]

5. Peak chocolate? Seriously? You have got to be kidding me.

[tammywammy]

7. Friday the Modern Marvel on the History Channel was on chocolate

Very interesting. Though the show didn't go over it, in Africa there's awful slave and child labor used to harvest cocoa beans.

I don't eat chocolate often, but I do keep Hershey Kisses in a bowl on my desk for my coworkers. I wish I knew of a slave/child labor free chocolate that's similar thing to the Kisses.

[leveymg]

9. All globally traded commodities are going up in Dollar terms. The Dollar is the issue, not cocoa.

Food and energy prices have gone up steeply because speculators expect to be able to make a killing by manipulation of currency exchange rates. There is a way to put a halt to this sort of speculation.

[Shagbark Hickory]

12. Does the now $6-a-bag of M&Ms have anything to do with this?