New solutions sought as global cocoa supply drops

There's a huge supply versus demand problem happening that's drastically impacting the chocolate industry.

According to Mars Inc. and Barry Callebaut, demand for cocoa is outpacing the supply by one million tonnes this year alone, and the trend is predicted to continue by an extra one million tonnes each decade.

Farmers are working on a new type of cacao (seeds from cacao trees and used to create cocoa) to try to fill this gap as drought, disease an the growth of emerging markets (with a sweet tooth) continue to impact the amount of it available.

In the meantime, manufacturers of chocolate products are predicted to pump up their offerings with things such as vegetable fat and flavour chemicals to offset the reduction of chocolate available. Chocolate bars may get smaller, but stuffed with more nuts and other fillers.

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