We Are Headed Toward a Chocolate Shortage, So Start Stockpiling Snickers Bars Now

Two of the world's leading chocolate makers reveal that we are headed toward a global shortage in 2030

By Jenna Mullins Nov 17, 2014 6:26 PMTags
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There are some things in life that if we were to lose, there would be no point in living anymore. Netflix. Taco Bell. Chris Pratt. Oxygen (the kind you breathe, not the channel). You know, the important stuff.

Well, that reality might be coming our way very soon, because the biggest candy companies in the world have revealed that we are headed toward a global chocolate shortage.

We will pause for a moment so everyone can collect the breath that just got knocked out of them.

Mars Inc. and Barry Callebaut, the planet's two leading candy-makers, have reported that in the next ten or so years, we will have a very serious chocolate deficit. And guess what's to blame?

Humans and their big, fat appetites. 

OK, that's not the only thing to blame. But it's definitely one of the big factors causing a possible shortage. Mars and Barry Callebaut say that less cocoa is being produced while too many people are inhaling chocolate, and thus, a perfect storm of chocolate shortage hell.

The Washington Post reports that by 2020, consumers will be eating up to one million metric tons more cocoa than is being produced. And that deficit could get as high as two million tons in 2030. That, plus a fungal disease destroying up to 40 percent of the world's cocoa production and dry weather killing the crop's growth in Ghana and Ivory Coast (which is where 70 percent of the cacao beans are produced), means that our beloved Snickers, M&M's and Milky Way bars could end up extinct.

And that, dear friends, is the perfect cause to panic.

So is anything being done to prevent an event that would arguably bring on the end of days? Well, an agriculture research group in Central Africa is trying their damndest.

This group is developing trees that could produce up to seven times the amount of beans than the traditional cocoa trees. But that solution could come at a cost, according to Bloomberg's Mark Schatzker

"Efforts are under way to make chocolate cheap and abundant, in the process inadvertently rendering it as tasteless as today's store-bought tomatoes, yet another food, along with chicken and strawberries, that went from flavorful to forgettable on the road to plenitude," he writes.

So would you rather have less chocolate that is delicious or more chocolate that doesn't tastes as good? This is a question we might have to start asking ourselves very seriously soon, so y'all best get to thinking about it!