ALSO SEE THIS DOC REGARDING CHOCOLATE PRODUCTION
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.
“Sometimes they were rude. Sometimes they were polite,” he said. “Behind me, they were sort of snickering.”
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.
“Not that many year ago, this would have been impossible,” said Mr. Mason, executive director of the Nature Conservation Research Centre, a non-profit devoted to sustainable development and resource conservation. “People were not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of what is on the horizon, how serious the future is.”
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.
Productivity on farms is not keeping pace with demand. Fatal diseases plague the crops. The soils cocoa grows in are depleted. Consumer demand, though, is growing. As standards of living improve in China and India, their new taste for chocolate keeps pace, feeding a worldwide consumption increase of about 2 per cent a year.
“We’re in a bit of a crisis as an industry,” said Chris Brett, vice-president of corporate responsibility and sustainability for Olam International, one of the largest cocoa-buying companies in the world, which sells beans to major chocolate producers, such as Cadbury, Mars and Nestle.
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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.
“Sometimes they were rude. Sometimes they were polite,” he said. “Behind me, they were sort of snickering.”
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.
“Not that many year ago, this would have been impossible,” said Mr. Mason, executive director of the Nature Conservation Research Centre, a non-profit devoted to sustainable development and resource conservation. “People were not sufficiently aware of the magnitude of what is on the horizon, how serious the future is.”
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.
Productivity on farms is not keeping pace with demand. Fatal diseases plague the crops. The soils cocoa grows in are depleted. Consumer demand, though, is growing. As standards of living improve in China and India, their new taste for chocolate keeps pace, feeding a worldwide consumption increase of about 2 per cent a year.
“We’re in a bit of a crisis as an industry,” said Chris Brett, vice-president of corporate responsibility and sustainability for Olam International, one of the largest cocoa-buying companies in the world, which sells beans to major chocolate producers, such as Cadbury, Mars and Nestle.
READ MORE
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