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MARS, Inc: We Are Running Out of Chocolate
schwit1 writes There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much chocolate, all of you. And it's getting so out of hand that the world could be headed towards a potentially disastrous (if you love chocolate) scenario if it doesn't stop. ... Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the two chocolate-makers warn that that number could swell to 1 million metric tons, a more than 14-fold increase; by 2030, they think the deficit could reach 2 million metric tons.
Chocolate rations have been increased to 20 grams!
Forget Ebola, forget IS, forget running out of IPv4 addresses, finally a real reason to panic.
So go ahead, make the most of it!
"There's no easy way to say this: You're eating too much chocolate, all of you."
My dentist has been telling me this for years. So has my wife. Do you think they're seeing each other?
Chocolate prices rise, people have larger incentive to grow cacao. I'm failing to see what the issue here is.
It's probably worth mentioning here that Mars, Inc. is one of the big players in the Cocoa futures market. This is not investment advice, but if you invest in cocoa futures based on this article, you would be making a bet based on a story from someone who hopes to make money off of you.
So, kind of an obvious question. How are we covering the deficit? If we are eating more than is being produced, how is that possible? Are we tapping into some big strategic cocoa reserve that is slowly dwindling?
I did quickly RTFA, but neither mentioned anything about this.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
How is this supposed to work? Are they just printing more cocoa beans?
I can imagine demand rising a lot, but unless there are huge cocoa reserves
somewhere (which I doubt in the case of a perishable) in the order of multiple
yearly harvests (global production seems to be somewhere around four million
tonnes), I can't see how this demand is going to be met with actual chocolate.
They could alleviate some of this problem by contacting the people who run Trader Joe's. They have this one dark chocolate bar (can't recall the name of it) that is so nasty and bitter, that it is inedible completely (unless you dip it in honey, then it is barely tolerable). It is worse than baking chocolate and is actually sold as if it is intended to be eaten like a normal bar of chocolate. If they just full stop quit producing that travesty, perhaps that could free up chocolate resources for other uses for perhaps another year or so.
This space unintentionally left blank.
If the price of cocoa was exploding, then people would plant them. And yet the price barely went from 1500$ per tonnes in 2005, to a spike of 3000$ between 2009-2011 and now is down to 2000$ per tonnes. So if there is cocoa beans missing , why is the price going down ? I am willing to bet that there is some non-free-market shenanigan going on here. Otherwise as cocoa goes missing the producer would get better price, and more people would plant them.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The evil plot of the Oompa Loompas to control the world's chocolate market is finally tightening it's grip.
Newsflash! The farmers can now make more on growing cocoa instead of opium because the price of chocolate has risen, whilst the price on drugs is declining. The war on drugs is won by market trends and not with guns.
Underholdning.info
In fact look here : http://www.unctad.info/upload/... we are still at lower price than 1978, way lower in constant dollar, although production is increasing.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
>> Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced.
>>... midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years
From the link apparently this streak is 6 years.
I find it hard to believe that 7 years ago there was a stockpile of maybe a half a million tons of cocoa, especially as it is a perishable item.
I am still PO at the EU to allow using other type of fat and still letting it called chocolate. Basically they allowed replacing higher quality fat with lower quality fat, which fits my definition of "adulteration".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The size of deficit is not terribly useful without knowing the size of the stock available. How much is there sitting around to be eaten?
Recycling?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So ... what you're saying is that women have no business on Slashdot.
Fuck you.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Why do you think Mars is an acronym?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I have a strong suspicion that the many resource depletion posts we see on here employ faulty forecasting techniques.
In this case, the article never mentions anything about how prices adjust to:
-demand
-supply constraints
-externalities
It's through prices that all those things communicate and avoid dire situations.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I bet the US have "strategic military reserves" or something stacked up somewhere. As is usual in such cases, however, a conflict will break out in Europe... The pleasing thing is that the Swiss don't get to play neutral this time!
since you make your candy bars 10% smaller every year (and charge the same price if not more)
Cocoa is very labor intensive way more than you can reasonably expect and today these remote communities have roads to them. Farmers can now grow bananas, pineapples, passion fruit etc for a lot less labor and have it at port in just a few days. For this reason many cocoa farmers are cutting down their trees and replacing them with crops that are less labor intensive. Additionally the youth are looking to jobs in oil (such as in Trinidad) or in the cities.
What foods are similar to cocoa in terms of labor? Truffles, saffron, vanilla, good cheeses etc. all of which are very expensive comparatively. Nobody faults these for not being $3/lb or less
What's the solution? To pay the farmers more. Right now, Cocoa sells for approx $2800/ton and in my opinion it should be closer to $10,000 - $20,000 / ton. This means that a chocolate bar would sell for $6-10 depending on packaging. (We currently sell chocolate we make from cocoa from Chuao Venezuela where we pay $5.50/lb for the cocoa where the London market was around $1.40/lb so we paid the farmers four times the market rate.)
Don't be wooed by so called "fair trade" certification. When I see that, I know the farmers just got screwed. Why? With Fair trade the farmers get a premium of $150-$200/ton -- a price increase of 5%. On the other hand, the FT organization charges the farmers between $2500 - $10000/year for the certification and in personal experience I've only seen it at $10,000 / year. At the same time they charge $0.10/lb ($220/ton) to whoever imports it for it to maintain its FT certification and another $0.10/lb for thr use of the logos and trademarks. So FT gets $440/ton and the farmers get $200. Not so fair. Plus don't forget the farmers certification and of course the companies need to be certified too. Oh yea. The inspectors are $750/day plus travel.
So what to do? Buy good chocolate. A bar should be anywhere from $5-$15. You can't make really good chocolate without using great cocoa. You can't get great cocoa without paying a significant premium to the farmers -- often 2-4 times the NY or London terminal price. So you know they are paid well. You simply can't have a $1-2 chocolate bar after if has been run though the supply chain (stores, distributors, the factory, various cocoa brokers, etc.) and know the farmers were paid well no matter the certification.
Now, if there was a serious shortage of beer or pizza, I could see that that would be worth discussing.
Chocolate is mostly an obsession of women, and children of tricks or treats age. I don't know why that is, but it never bothered me enough to investigate.
No wonder AC's are so weird. Sorry guys. Your only hope is that you will probably be the last survivors of the upcoming Chocolate Wars. And a dismal, faint hope it will be.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
As every INTELLIGENT person knows, diamonds are only semi-precious stones
Have you ever tried to sell a diamond? (from 1982, but still relevant today), and The diamond myth,
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Severe munchies in some states.
Tomorrow: Mars announces Soylent Brown
Don't forget Ebola. The Ivory Coast grows a huge amount of the world's cocoa. It is right next door to Liberia. Most of the labor to harvest the cocoa crop is migrant labor from Liberia. Ivory Coast has closed its border with Liberia in response to the Ebola. So, the cocoa crop there is not going to be harvested unless the growers figure out another source of cheap labor. Stock up on chocolate now.
Have any of you eaten ice cream lately? Its better then half AIR. They are pumping so much air into ice cream you can plug you mouth with it and still get enough air to not pass out. I refuse to buy ice cream anymore. I make my own. Try melting it it doesn't melt to a puddle it stays fluffed up. We are getting assraped by the food industry The ice cream rip off is only one small example.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Seriously, these companies should be working on the cacao plant to get it to grow in other environments. Right now, it is grown in many locations that are ran by drug lords, gangs, etc.
However, it is pricy enough that it could be grown in greenhouses further north.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So you're saying we're at peak chocolate now? Can't we just build pipelines to get the crude into our factories? Maybe use solar energy in it's production?
cut out the bliss point bullshit that makes your products addictive and everyone will be doing better. fewer people will develop type II diabetes and you will have a viable long term strategy. what's that? you dont want to affect your profits despite being a sound strategy? hmm, sounds like you are the problem.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
My Wife's response:
"OK that's it, I'm cutting you and the kid off. More for me!!!"
Min
On the whole, I find that I prefer Slashdot posts to twitter ones because I don't get limited to 140 chars before
Not only is chocolate labor-intensive, it's a terrible excuse for a plant. If its seeds are not spread by animals, it will either rot on the tree, or fall right next to the parent and compete with it. Also, at least in Central America, the primary pollinator of the cacao plant is some sort of tiny sandfly -- locally they call them "chitras". And it's not like they're growing this stuff on nice flat fields in neat rows either. Even after the harvest, you have to hope that the weather stays nice long enough to ferment and dry the beans. And then, as you say, they have to contend with a miserable pay scale. There may be worse occupations, but I can't think of any offhand.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Expect divorce rates among the lower income levels to rise as women lose the ability to cope without chocolate.
This is not a real problem.
Demand goes up.
Supply doesn't match demand.
Prices go up.
Demand adjusts downward to meet prices.
Simple market corrections.
This is not a real problem.
In the early 60s I worked as an exterminator. Our company was hired to fumigate warehouses full of cocoa beans owned by Nestle. They hired every vacant warehouse in New York State to hold those beans. I got to see a lot of warehouses and an unimaginable quantity of beans. The fumigations were strictly precautionary.
I was told that Nestle was taking advantage of low world prices and had bought the the entire world' scrap,of cocoa beans for thst year. In following years, they could either sell them at a profit, or use them up in Nestle chocolate factories.
Time to come up with chocolate substitutes.
I suspected very much as I read this that that is exactly what this is about. Some of the candy companies have been wanting to and trying to get regulations passed that let them produce lower quality stuff and still call it chocolate, which they can't do currently in the USA (although some pass off some pretty poor crap and the consumer thinks that they are getting chocolate). I find it very hard to believe that on an on-going basis we are consuming more chocolate than the farmers can produce. Sure, one year or even a couple that might happen, but if it happens every year then there is a pretty obvious question that you should be asking yourself.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
First we loose the cocoa, then the sorghum and rice, lastly the corn, then humanity suffocates in the overabundance of nitrogen, oxygen deficient atmosphere.
It seems to me like this problem will eventually cause people to look into ways to automate the bean picking process, and remove much of the labor-intensiveness?
It's not like this hasn't been an issue before with other crops.... I get the idea that the only reason this has been done with all the manual labor for so long is geography. The beans are grown primarily in places where labor is dirt cheap.
Paying the farmers more will happen naturally if chocolate gets too scarce. (Companies intent on making cheap candy will use very little cacao in whatever they sell, and those interested in really good chocolate candy will up the price.) But those with a vested interest in getting large supplies of cacao beans at as low a price as possible will probably invest in technology to harvest them more efficiently. Get directly involved in the process, opening up farming operations using the machinery -- and you've got your own supplier that you own and control. Not a bad solution, really -- and will bring costs back down again.
I've got a solution: boat lift from Mexico and Central America.
(before you get excited, it'll never happen; for political reasons Puerto Rico can't get enough labor to harvest coffee, and it's right nearby... a boat lift to the Ivory Coast is way too expensive)
Just a quick note to say thanks for your comments in this thread. Fascinating to learn some more about the chocolate industry and what the hell chocolate is. As an Australian that recently moved to the US I have been surprised about the weird tasting chocolate that is commonly available (e.g., Hershey bars) and now have a better idea what to look for.
Would love to know what you make so I can look out for it in the stores (... if there's anywhere in Ohio that stocks them!)
I read somewhere (I lost the source) that one solution being worked on is to develop a new variety of the cacao tree that is more productive. Seems there has been some success in that except that the cocoa produced by the new trees tastes like crap. Like tomatoes and corn, expect the new variety to displace the current one resulting in a lesser quality product being accepted as "normal".
It is a plant that is easily cultivated at any latitude up to 25 degrees. It is also readily cultivated in green houses if you really want to push it.
We will never run out of chocolate.
In a free market, what will happen is that prices of chocolate will go up which will both discourage consumption while increasing the rewards for production.
The system self corrects. Econ 101.
What might be in danger is the Mars business model. That might be in for a bumpy road. But chocolate itself? Absolutely fine.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Let's hope this ends the race to the bottom of price and quality.
Reality, brown food color (blood) + "natural" flavors - chocolate even cheaper.
Everyone who buys Wild Hunt will receive 16 specially prepared DLCs absolutely for free, regardless of platform.
Wait, there's chocolate in Mars bars? I'm shocked.
So...if..the gas industry can charge crazy prices..citing we're running out of oil...
Then we could charge a whole lot more for chocolate if we say we're running out of cocoa! GENIUS!
So last year we imported 70 000 tons of cocoa from... outside Earth ? Or are there long-term stocks of cocoa somewhere ? Because if the latter, then getting rid of those stocks year after year and moving to a tighter production chain makes a lot of sense, and fits in the trend of decreasing transaction costs. It could also be a sign that producers expect their cocoa products to sell less well in the future, or raw cocoa to become cheaper. In any case, the claims in TFA make little sense.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
When we are eating more chocolate than there is produced, is it because someone invested in futures, is it because its not really chocolate, or is it just really old chocolate?
Alarmist article from a big corporation to set the stage for loose regulations on chocolate so that the masses can keep getting their 99cents "chocolate" bars (aka hydrogenated fat with dark-brown solids, corn syrup, emulsifiers and natural flavoring agents, whatever other non-cocoa crap - tastes like cocoa) and the company's pockets full.
Dude, didn't you know about the Strategic Cocoa Reserves... underground salt domes in Texas and Louisiana that store about 112 million cubic meters of beans?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If we're eating more than we produce, that means we're eating stockpiled chocolate, right? Which means old chocolate bars. And we haven't noticed?
I used to wonder about the unique "Tropical Chocolate" bars we used to be issued in Vietnam. They always had a musty smell to them, but I figured it was from their unique properties (NOT to melt in hot climates) .. and of course all military rations are expected to be stored for lengthy periods of time.
The real panic won't begin until the stores (e.g., stored, stockpiled chocolate) run out.