By ROSIE WATERLAND
Nobody panic but… ACTUALLY EVERYBODY PANIC.
The world is running out of chocolate. REPEAT: The world is actually, seriously, running out of freaking chocolate.
Bloomberg are reporting what major chocolate manufacturers have known for a while: that we are all massive chocolate pigs and the demand for sweet, sweet cocoa is stripping the earth of all its natural cocoa resources. In other words… WE ARE EATING MORE CHOCOLATE THAN THE CHOCOLATE MAKERS CAN PROVIDE AND SOON IT WILL RUN OUT AND WE WILL BE LIVING IN A THUNDERDOME-STYLE UNIVERSE WHERE CHOCOLATE IS TRADED ON THE BLACK MARKET LIKE GOLD.
Or something like that.
Here’s some actual, non-hysterical information from Bloomberg:
Because of disease, drought, rapacious new markets and the displacement of cacao by more-productive crops such as corn and rubber, demand is expected to outstrip supply by an additional 1 million tons every decade for the foreseeable future.
And then this: