• World’s biggest chocolate-maker says "We’re running out of chocolate"
    61 replies, posted
[QUOTE=Evi.tf;46504969]how about we stop producing for a year or two and just let it grow[/QUOTE] Chocolate is a pain in the ass to grow. Source: Trying to grow cacao as a houseplant. The leaves are thin as tissue paper, and to thrive it requires the conditions of the rain forest understory.
I sense uprisings and famine in the coming years.
[QUOTE=ridinmybike;46506136]riiight, and lose god knows how many jobs[/QUOTE] a worthwhile sacrifice
Well, at least we still have peanut butter.
The great chocolate wars will begin soon.
I feel bad for women who need chocolate when they're on their periods..
I hope everyone is actually reading the ENTIRE article. There are some pretty amazing developments in cacao varieties coming, specially out of Guyana - VERY flavoursome, resistant to the most common diseases wiping out cacao crops, and robust enough to be planted and produced almost anywhere cacao CAN be grown. And by the looks of it, a fair few farmers who ditched cacao production due to disease wiping them out may be soon returning to it again... It may take a fair few years, but I think production should pick up considerably AND due to these advancements, chocolate is likely to taste better than ever. I'm actually kind of excited for the future, being a massive chocolate aficionado myself.
[QUOTE=Sobek-;46507130]I hope everyone is actually reading the ENTIRE article. There are some pretty amazing developments in cacao varieties coming, specially out of Guyana - VERY flavoursome, resistant to the most common diseases wiping out cacao crops, and robust enough to be planted and produced almost anywhere cacao CAN be grown. And by the looks of it, a fair few farmers who ditched cacao production due to disease wiping them out may be soon returning to it again... It may take a fair few years, but I think production should pick up considerably AND due to these advancements, chocolate is likely to taste better than ever. I'm actually kind of excited for the future, being a massive chocolate aficionado myself.[/QUOTE] One of the issues is that if they clearcut the forest where the cacao was planted to plant soybeans, they would first need to grow back the forest before they can plant the cacao.
Very true. Though from what I'm seeing, these farmers ARE willing to do this if they can be assured of growing a breed of cacao that is resistant to the common diseases that wiped them out in the first place - the profits per ton of cacao compared to pineapple or corn make it VERY worth it for them in the end...
They better keep the flavor; flavorless chocolate isn't worth eating.
[QUOTE=demoguy08;46505009]Hahah, chocolate shortages will be the least of our fucking concerns if we can't come up with a solution to the fact that we're running out of space to grow enough crops to feed the damn world.[/QUOTE] Sorry to disappoint you Malthus, but we're not running out of room.
[QUOTE=Fatfatfatty;46505793]But I need to stockpile chocolatem but it has a limited lifespan.[/QUOTE] I've eaten chocolate bars from 2006 and even older that sat on shelves where I work. I've also got a stack of thick baking/eating chocolate that "expired" in 2007 and I still use them. The only thing that really happens is some of the chocolate gets a grey-ish color just from sugar bloom and some of the flavor is lost. Chocolate lasts a pretty long time.
I feel like if we were to run out of chocolate, we'd have some new type of product that's made to taste just like chocolate but actually isn't or something along those lines.
[QUOTE=AntonioR;46505576]With a "billion" people that are obese and 1-2 billion that don't have enough food every day we could temporally make some adjustments without increasing the amount of crops.[/QUOTE] "Eat your food, there are starving people in Africa" "SO WHY DIDN'T WE GIVE THEM ALL THE SHIT THAT HUMAN BOWLING BALL OVER THERE ATE?"
The day chocolate is no more is the day all my guy and gal friends go nuts. To save humanities greatest resource(as stated above): 1. Make chocolate expensive 2. Plant more cocoa trees and slow down production 3. People will by expensive chocolate in small doses due to inflation 4. More chocolate by next year. Rinse and Repeat. The future for chocolate is assured!
[QUOTE=maddogsamurai;46507990]The day chocolate is no more is the day all my guy and gal friends go nuts. To save humanities greatest resource(as stated above): 1. Make chocolate expensive 2. Plant more cocoa trees and slow down production 3. People will by expensive chocolate in small doses due to inflation 4. More chocolate by next year. Rinse and Repeat. The future for chocolate is assured![/QUOTE] To plant more cocoa trees you need to stop the deforestation of rainforests around the world. Which means you need to grow the local economy to make logging unprofitable by comparison. Which means your own economy needs to not be shit.
[QUOTE=Metalcastr;46507580]They better keep the flavor; flavorless chocolate isn't worth eating.[/QUOTE] You mean those chocolate-colored sugar-filled blocks? Do not remind me of those, please.
[QUOTE={TFS} Rock Su;46508622]You mean those chocolate-colored sugar-filled blocks? Do not remind me of those, please.[/QUOTE] "Hershey's" As they're called in the states.
[QUOTE=demoguy08;46505009]Hahah, chocolate shortages will be the least of our fucking concerns if we can't come up with a solution to the fact that we're running out of space to grow enough crops to feed the damn world.[/QUOTE] That won't ever be a problem because we don't even eat the raw products from crops that much; instead, they are used to feed farm animals for meat, so in the end a few tons of grains yeld ~100kg of pork meat for example. In case meat would become so expensive people couldn't afford to buy it anymore, they'd instead go buy grain products like breakfast cereals and bread more often. Also, rice is the most economic and productive/ha of the grains, and that's what ~half of the population will be eating as their staple meal. There won't be an issue there; only, perhaps, prices might raise if population grows and production stagnates or falls. Wich I really don't see happening, because GMO is still not widely used, and land with agricultural potential is still not accessible due to bad infrastructure or is simply not worth investing now. Think of it like the oil industry. When the price of oil rises, some oil fields become economically reasonable to get extracted, and if that happens on a big enough scale the price drops again after a while, if the production has outpaced demand. As more deveoped countries get out of poverty, agriculture there will be more efficient and productive; you don't even need big patches of land to supply many people. California's Valley is the perfect example. Spain's greenhouses in Almeria is another. Those 2 places supply the majority of fresh veggies during winter time in N. America and Europe.
I thought posting the whole news article wasn't allowed? Its impossible to read that mess with all html tags and shit. As Garry said: "Please do not paste entire articles into threads. Link to them instead." Just got my attention when someone gets banned asking for TL:DR when the first post is unreadable mess. There was already news last year we would be running out of chocolate in just few decades so this doesn't surprise me.
I don't like chocolate massively so not really a problem, but if this were a shortage of potatoes! that would be another story!
why not find an island and grow nothing but cacao trees there?
Reading this just made me remember that halloween is a thing, oh god, all the poor chocolates.
[QUOTE=rulssi;46509535]I thought posting the whole news article wasn't allowed? Its impossible to read that mess with all html tags and shit. As Garry said: "Please do not paste entire articles into threads. Link to them instead." Just got my attention when someone gets banned asking for TL:DR when the first post is unreadable mess. There was already news last year we would be running out of chocolate in just few decades so this doesn't surprise me.[/QUOTE] I didn't copied the whole article, mister, if you read the source. It fucked up because somehow the forum wasn't able to work with the tags on the site.
Do you think the current outbreak in West Africa has a part to play in the current decline? I imagine workers afraid of the ebola/coming down with it would put a damper on production.
Not Chocolate Now what will girlfriends eat after they break up with their ice cream and shitty rom coms
[QUOTE=demoguy08;46505009]Hahah, chocolate shortages will be the least of our fucking concerns if we can't come up with a solution to the fact that we're running out of space to grow enough crops to feed the damn world.[/QUOTE] i'm probably late on this but we're really not running out of room for crops at all. we produce more than enough food, it's just a very large percent of it goes towards feeding livestock, which produce very little food themselves.
Why don't the chocolate makers just make more chocolate? [t]http://static.fjcdn.com/pictures/I+dunno+lol_c9148a_4542354.png[/t]
[QUOTE=ilikecorn;46507927]Huh? The US alone could supply enough crops for the entire earth if we didn't grow crops for fuel and animal use too. That's JUST the US.[/QUOTE] that's only if the country makes a concerted effort not to damage the environment that the crops grow in via nutrient depletion and soil erosion. environmental degradation has the potential to cause famine if left unchecked. the problem is that less taxing methods of growing food (crop rotations, integrated pest management, no-tillage, organic fertilizer), while more sustainable in the long term, increase the input costs for growing food and make it difficult to feed more people. genetic modification however, if it isn't swept away by anti-intellectualism and baseless fear, could be the solution to that problem.
is there a solution for this or not? i cant live in a world without chocolate at the very least make it last for 80 years (ill be long dead by then)
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