Who cares about chocolate and a potential global shortage?? haha - almost EVERYBODY.
But maybe there's more to this than sensationalist headlines... maybe even a great sustainability and agricultural renewal story.
The article I read https://www.davidwolfe.com/chocolate-shortage-30-years/ is reasonable in terms of climate change projections and how they are likely to affect traditional cacao production globally, but it misses some really exciting shifts happening here in Asia. And also neatly sidesteps that is probably GOOD that a large chunk of the traditional global production process will collapse and fail. Because it needs to.
Yesterday I visited an exciting new sustainable chocolate business here in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand. Siamaya is one of several new players in the boutique cacao product business. You can read more about them here. http://www.siamayachocolate.com/
Their chocolate is STUNNING, they have nice diversity in their product range and yes, I will be retailing it in my new Pure Thai Naturals online store, open for business in the next week or so. Their business has been able to grow based on solid research and projects auspiced by Mae Jo University here in Chiang Mai, which have been a direct response to the organic and sustainable agriculture initiatives of Thailand's late beloved King, His Majesty Bhumibol Aduljadev Rama IX.
The majestic mountains of Northern Thailand are becoming the newest go-to place in the world for sustainably produced, organic cacao. Mae Jo's cacao project has been running for well over 10 years, and we are just beginning to see enough cacao trees fruiting well to sustain boutique companies like Siamaya. And there many new cacao businesses in the planning stages.
Ten years ago it was almost impossible to get a decent cup of coffee in Chiang Mai. And yet today the city is littered with so many boutique coffee shops that it takes one's breath away. On a crisp high-cool-season morning in the Old City, the delicious fragrance of freshly prepared coffee wafts everywhere. Northern Thai coffee - much of it organic and sustainably grown - is already competing on the global stage, winning quality awards and being noticed. It's also becoming cheaper and cheaper here, as it becomes a mainstream agricultural product and is produced in export quantity.
So will cacao really become rare, expensive or disappear globally? Of course not. But the countries which produce most of it will change. And because Thailand has far better labor laws and controls now than countries like Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire, the global price of chocolate will - and should - rise. Other producing countries like Ecuador will continue to flourish and the trade will simply shift.
Is it good thing that these traditional African countries will see much of their massive chocolate empire fail with not enough raw cacao product? Arguably yes, if you are speaking from the point of view of a child-slave-laborer eking out an existence. Because the chocolate business in Africa is dirty and shameful in terms of its human and environmental cost.
So what will happen to these workers? Globally, we will be required to step up: to ensure they have adequate basic infrastructure; to bring them into the digital age, and to stop unfair trade practices and monopolies which keep profits in rich supposedly-first-world countries. The next 30 years will require us to become HUMAN and CONSCIOUS when we shop. To find new ways of distributing global resources and wealth, and to drop our collective colonial rape & pillage mentality.
What excited me about my visit to Siamaya yesterday (apart from the superb 85% vegan chocolate sample!) was that Neil, one of the business partners, has a PhD in sustainability and is looking for ways to being their business forward in ways that reward the growers and supply chain workers. What else REALLY excited me? That the possibility for Pure Thai Naturals to start producing organic cacao-based body butters commercially is real, and here. Stay tuned.
I'm encouraged as new agricultural paradigms become more mainstream. And excited about the future of #organic #sustainable #thai #chocolate.
Suddenly, I feel a craving coming on.