The end of the world in 20 years: chocolate will become expensive

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.

If that is not a sign of the coming end of the world!

"What the hell," you say?  Why this crisis?  It is actually a good thing.
But, how can this be good?  Because it makes us wake up to the reality of cocoa production:

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.

"It's hard to maintain production at high levels in a particular plot of land every time, because of pest problems that eat away at the yields and the farms need to be rejuvenated," explains Thomas Dietsch, research director of ecosystem services at the Earthwatch Organisation. "Although research into new varieties and better management methods could solve those problems, the other challenge is that cocoa is competing for agricultural space with other commodities like palm oil – which is increasingly in demand for biofuels."

Meanwhile, as the supply of the raw material diminishes, millions of new consumers in the developing world are becoming addicted to the sweet energy-fix at the end of the processing chain. "Chocolate consumption is increasing faster than cocoa production – and it's not sustainable," Tony Lass, chairman of the Cocoa Research Association, told the annual conference of Britain's Academy of Chocolate last month.

Despite price rises on the trading floor, precious little reaches the smallholders who make up 95 per cent of growers, according to Mr. Lass, a former Cadburys trader and ethical sourcing advisor who has co-authored a book on the cocoa industry.

"These smallholders earn just 80 cents a day," he says. "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."

This graph, from UNCTAD, is data from 2005/2006 on cocoa beans production--the share of the producing countries.  Note the importance of the two neighboring West African countries

A contrast to this geography is the geography of consumption of cocoa.

As one might hypothesize, poor people don't eat a whole lot of chocolates nor do they drink chocolate milk by the gallons.

The following chart explains it all:

I would not mind paying, for instance, a special tax every time I buy a candy bar if I can be guaranteed that the money will go directly to the cocoa producing farmers who engage in this labor-intensive activity for which their monetary rewards are low.