Out of chocolate in 20 years? It will be as much as caviar?! , page 1

I saw this this morning and got a good laugh and then got nervous

....So we will be out of "affordable" chocolate in 20 years or so...so start stocking up! I would have to stock up now for sure, because I tend to like the cheaper chocolates esp dark chocolate Hershey...mmmm

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Let's face it more people like chocolate than don't (sorry my Canadian friend

), and chocolate sells like hot cakes. I never realized how much chocolate sold until my first job and then others where chocolate was sold and I saw how fast it had to be replaced. I sill think M&M's are the most popular "affordable" chocolate, they had to be replaced often but we always had boxes in the back so it wasn't a big deal. I was just surprised at how many boxes we sold a week.

Here is the reason behind future shortage and future high costs of chocolate.

he reason for this unimaginable shortage – which has been presaged by the doubling of cocoa prices in six years to an all-time high over the past three decades – is simple.

Farmers in the countries that produce the bulk of cocoa bought by the multinationals who control the market have found the crop a bitter harvest. The minimal rewards they have historically received do not provide incentives for the time-consuming work of replanting as their trees die off – a task that usually means moving to a new area of canopied forest and waiting three to five years for a new crop to mature.

Despite price rises on the trading floor, precious little reaches the smallholders who make up 95 per cent of growers, according to Mr. Lass, a former Cadburys trader and ethical sourcing advisor who has co-authored a book on the cocoa industry.

"These smallholders earn just 80 cents a day," he says. "So there is no incentive to replant trees when they die off, and to wait up to five years for a new crop, and no younger generation around to do the replanting. The children of these African cocoa farmers, whose life expectancy is only 56, are heading for the cities rather than undertake backbreaking work for such a small reward." As harvests diminish on the Ivory Coast, by far the world's biggest cocoa producer, crops in Indonesia, the third largest producer, have been hit by a change in weather systems, forcing cocoa prices sky-high.

chocolate shortage

When I read the article I couldn't help but feel bad for the farmers who harvest our beloved cocoa. They are paid about 80 cents a day! Chocolate is a billion dollar industry, name one holiday where chocolate isn't given as a gift. How is it that the chocolate industry makes billions and these people make 80 cents a day?! That just doesn't seem right to me...

Would you pay 5 bucks for a candy bar? I would for special occasions

What are your thoughts?