Climate Change Is Coming For Your Chocolate

This episode delves into the impact of climate change on the chocolate industry, highlighting the challenges faced by cocoa farmers and the potential future of chocolate production.

1. Climate Change Effects: Erratic weather patterns and new diseases are significantly impacting cocoa production.
2. Economic Challenges: Cocoa farmers face low earnings and harsh conditions, which threaten the sustainability of the industry.
3. Consumer Impact: Consumers are likely to see rising chocolate prices and smaller product sizes.
4. Potential Solutions: Expanding cocoa cultivation to new regions and investing in small farms could mitigate some problems.
5. Innovation in Chocolate: Alternative chocolates that don't rely on traditional cocoa are becoming more prominent as sustainability becomes a concern.

1: Introduction

Emily Kwong introduces the topic and her personal connection to chocolate. Discusses with Yasmine Tyag the changing chocolate industry. Emily Kwong: "Chocolate is not a topic of deep scientific inquiry. Or is it?"

2: The Science of Cocoa

Details the growth and requirements of cocoa trees, their geographical limitations, and the traditional process of turning cocoa into chocolate. Yasmine Tyag: "Cocoa trees are known to be very finicky, very fussy plants."

3: Impact of Climate Change

Explores how climate change is altering cocoa production through diseases and weather changes, affecting global supply. Yasmine Tyag: "The weather is becoming really erratic where chocolate is supposed to grow."

4: Economic and Social Issues

Discusses the socio-economic challenges faced by cocoa farmers, including aging workforce and reliance on child labor. Yasmine Tyag: "Somebody's got to pick these pods. And unfortunately, it's often children."

5: Future of Chocolate

Considers the future of the chocolate industry, including potential expansions and innovations in chocolate production. Yasmine Tyag: "The alternative chocolate space is interesting. It's kind of like the fake meat of chocolate."

1. Explore Alternative Chocolates: Try chocolates made from non-traditional ingredients to support sustainable practices.
2. Support Fair Trade: Purchase fair-trade certified chocolates to ensure farmers receive a fair wage.
3. Educate Yourself: Learn about the origin of the chocolates you consume and the conditions under which they are produced.
4. Advocate for Change: Support policies that promote sustainable farming practices and fair wages for farmers.
5. Reduce Consumption: Consider reducing chocolate consumption to decrease demand on strained resources.

Chocolate may never be the same. The majority of chocolate is made in just two countries and erratic weather from climate change is decreasing cocoa production. A handful of extreme weather events—from drought to heavy rainfall—could have lasting effects on the chocolate industry. Yasmin Tayag, a food, health and science writer at The Atlantic, talks to host Emily Kwong about the cocoa shortage: What's causing it, how it's linked to poor farming conditions and potential solutions. Plus, they enjoy a chocolate alternative taste test.

People

Emily Kwong, Yasmine Tyag

Companies

Planet A Foods

Books

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Guest Name(s):

Yasmine Tyag

Content Warnings:

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Emily Kwong
You're listening to short wave from NPR.

Chocolate is not a topic of deep scientific inquiry. Or is it?

Yasmine Tyag
Mmm hmm.

Emily Kwong
Okay, this is melting in a completely different way. I have a confession to make. I keep an emergency chocolate stash in my pantry at all times. I eat it like it's my job.

But I met someone recently for whom chocolate is her job. Yasmine Tyag is a food health and science writer for the Atlantic, and last week she led me in a chocolate taste test.

Yasmine Tyag
It tastes like a chocolate pastry.

Emily Kwong
I wonder if that's the oats, because Yasmine recently wrote about how the chocolate industry is changing.

Before her reporting, she called herself a fan of cheap chocolate.

Yasmine Tyag
One of my guiltiest pleasures is the Cadbury cream egg, and it's just pure sweetness.

It makes me feel like a five year old kid hyped up on sugar at Easter time.

Emily Kwong
But for this taste test, Yasmin wanted me to try something from a Germany based company called Planet A Foods.

Yasmine Tyag
Their product, cho viva their chocolate, is notable because it contains no cocoa.

Emily Kwong
The product is made mostly from oats.

Yasmine Tyag
The color looks a little darker than a typical milk chocolate bar to me.

Emily Kwong
And it tasted yummy. We really liked the alt chocolate peanut butter cups in particular. It's giving, honestly the flavors of my childhood.

Yasmine Tyag
If you didn't tell me this wasn't chocolate, I would have no idea.

Emily Kwong
Yasmin has been keeping eyes on the evolving chocolate industry for a while. Retail prices for chocolate are soaring as yearly harvests of cocoa are dipping. And when she noticed the price of cocoa was on par with the price of copper, she had to write a.

Yasmine Tyag
Story, especially as I realized that it was going to have such a, potentially have such a huge impact on the chocolate that I eat all the time.

Emily Kwong
So today on the show, big changes are ahead in the chocolate industry. We get into the science of cocoa trees, the struggles that farmers face in a changing climate, and what consumers can expect. From Bean to bar, I'm Emily Kwong, and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR.

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Emily Kwong
Okay, Yasmin, I learned a lot from your article about chocolate, the state of the chocolate industry, and the fact that there's an actual definition of what can be deemed chocolate. This is an FDA standard. What is it?

Yasmine Tyag
Yes. According to the FDA, chocolate has to contain at minimum 10% cocoa.

Emily Kwong
And if it's not, it doesn't get to be the big c. The chocolate.

Yasmine Tyag
Okay, it doesn't get to be the big c, but it can be chocolate flavored or, you know, chocolate like.

Emily Kwong
Got it. Well, let's back up to chocolate itself and where it comes from. It comes from a plant. Tell me about these trees and where they grow.

Yasmine Tyag
Let me preface this by saying cocoa trees are known to be very finicky, very fussy plants. They like things to be just so and so. One of their most important characteristics is they only grow within about 20 degrees north and south of the equator. That's not a lot of area.

The trees like this region, because they have very specific requirements for heat and moisture. They're kind of tall, you know, at least taller than a basketball net, sometimes much taller. They tend to have a sort of rounded, squat appearance because of the way their branches grow.

They've got really beautiful dark green, glossy leaves. And hanging from the branches are these pods.

To me, they look like deflated footballs. They're kind of elongated, a little wrinkly.

They can be football colored or sometimes brighter colors, like red or orange or yellow or even purple.

And it's inside these pods that we get the cocoa bean.

What you see instead of, like brown beans are, they look like white fruit, kind of like lychees.

Emily Kwong
Okay, how big are they?

Yasmine Tyag
About date sized.

Emily Kwong
Okay.

Yasmine Tyag
They're kind of fluffy. So this is the pulp surrounding the cocoa bean, and that has to be removed before, you know, the processing can begin.

Emily Kwong
What is the process? What are some of the major steps?

Yasmine Tyag
As I learned, it's so complicated to get from fruit to chocolate bar.

Emily Kwong
So the final product is nothing like the fruit in so many ways.

Yasmine Tyag
Not at all. So, first step, remove the bean from the fruit. Then the beans are fermented. And what fermentation does is it helps the flavor develop and gets rid of any bitter tastes.

Emily Kwong
Okay, so, like, the flavor of chocolate is really coming from this fermentation process.

Yasmine Tyag
That's the first step. There's so much more.

So, for after fermentation, then you dry the beans. Then they are roasted so much like coffee beans.

These raw beans get most of their flavor from the way they are roasted, the temperature at which they're roasted, and for how long.

But it has this husk on it that you don't want. So the bean is split open, and that husk is removed. And what you're left with is the cocoa nib. This cocoa nib is the edible part. This is later ground down to release cocoa mass, like cocoa solids. Plus cocoa, cocoa butter, which is the fat that comes out of this.

This stage. And later, you might start adding milk and sugar and other flavoring agents.

More refining. Then tempering happens, which is the process of, like, heating and cooling chocolate so that we get the snap that we want and that glossy coating on it. And then finally, you can turn that into something like a bar or a chocolate shelf or an egg.

Emily Kwong
Okay.

Unidentified Speaker
Okay.

Emily Kwong
Okay. You know, one of the big takeaways from your article is that climate change is coming for chocolate. It is already impacting the chocolate industry right now. What does that look like?

Yasmine Tyag
So many things are happening, but the big thing, I would say, is that the weather is becoming really erratic where chocolate is supposed to grow. Most of the world's chocolate comes from two countries in West Africa. That is Ivory coast and Ghana. So when the weather there gets weird, that really affects the entire global supply. And so what we've been seeing lately is heavier than usual rainfall. And what this did last year was create the conditions for a fungus to spread that causes something called black pod disease. You'll see little blotches appear on the cocoa pods as they're on the trees, and slowly they'll just turn black. They'll rot on the plant, fall off.

That tanks production.

And then earlier this year, you had drier than usual conditions. It sucked all the moisture out of these plantations that the trees require, and production started to dip. So all of this is happening as another really severe virus is decimating cocoa. And this is called swollen shoot virus. It causes these bulges on the trees and ultimately kills them over time. And what's really devastating about this particular disease is that once it's on a plantation, it spreads rapidly, it can cross into other people's plantations. And the only way to get rid of it is to uproot all the trees and start fresh.

Emily Kwong
This just sounds untenable for any chocolate farmer.

Yasmine Tyag
Totally. Another way that climate change could change chocolate as we know it is that it might change the flavor of the beans.

So the cocoa plants are very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. And as the climate becomes more erratic, this could result in inconsistent flavors coming out in the cocoa beans themselves.

And the way the cocoa industry might deal with this is by roasting the beans to a really high temperature to sort of eliminate all discrepancies.

But it might also get rid of a lot of the complexity in the beans, resulting in maybe more boring, less interesting chocolate.

Emily Kwong
So you were saying earlier that most of the world's chocolate supply comes from just two countries, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire. And you say in your article that in Ghana, the average cocoa farmer is close to 50 years old and that a new generation of farmers there is needed to maintain the cocoa supply. But young people may just walk away from the industry.

What other issues do cocoa farmers in this region face beyond climate and beyond an aging workforce?

Yasmine Tyag
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is they're paid so little for what they do, in part because the prices for cocoa that they earn, they don't totally reflect the market they're set by the governments of those countries at the beginning of the growing season. You know, they don't have money to buy, you know, pesticides. They aren't able to invest in irrigation. It is a really bad industry to be in. Somebody's got to pick these pods. And unfortunately, it's often children, people under 15 years old, sometimes farmers, out of desperation because they're not getting enough money for their crop, lease out land for illegal gold mining.

For the farmer, it is a way to make a little bit more money just to get by.

Emily Kwong
Meanwhile, you say in your piece that demand for chocolate is rising.

Yasmine Tyag
Yes.

Emily Kwong
So how are you squaring this reality with that?

Yasmine Tyag
The way things stand right now, there isn't going to be enough chocolate. But there are a couple of things that could change potentially.

I think a big thing is that the cocoa growing regions could expand out of west Africa into other parts of the world along the equator.

Chocolate makers might end up using less cocoa. Okay. Or, you know, what the hope is for people who are still feeling a little more optimistic about the cocoa industry is that the big chocolate makers like Hershey's and Cadbury will finally realize that they have to invest in these small farms if they want to keep up that supply that they've had for this long. And that would mean, you know, paying them a living wage.

But none of that is guaranteed. And for now, there is no real way to square the growing demand with the decreased supply.

Emily Kwong
Yeah.

And your piece highlights some statistics from this Reuters article that I want to share, that the international cocoa organization expects global cocoa production to fall by nearly 11% this season.

And then according to a market research firm named Circana, us retail stores charged over 11% more for chocolate products last year versus 2022.

So given all this, what do you think consumers are going to see from chocolate?

Yasmine Tyag
I think we're already starting to see it. You know, chocolate prices are rising and chocolate is getting smaller, or at least like the package sizes are getting smaller.

The chocolate companies have to make up the cost somehow if coco is really costing that much more. And so maybe more peanut butter cups with a lot of peanut butter and less chocolate. Or like chocolate bars with so many almonds and fruits in them.

Emily Kwong
Or maybe you try out some alternative chocolates.

Yasmine Tyag
Yeah, the alternative chocolate space is interesting. It's kind of like the fake meat of chocolate.

I think for those of us who've had the privilege of eating chocolate like this our whole lives, you know, it really makes you ask, what made this kind of chocolate so ubiquitous in the first place?

Emily Kwong
Yasmin Tyag is a reporter for the Atlantic. Thank you so much for talking to us.

Yasmine Tyag
Thanks so much for having me.

Emily Kwong
You can find a link to Yasmin's article in our episode notes. This episode was produced and fact checked by Burleigh McCoy and edited by our showrunner Rebecca Ramirez. Code Takas Sugi Chernovin was the audio engineer.

I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to short wave from NPR.

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