The world population is going to be 9 billion people by 2050 and in my experience, at least 99.9% of them will love chocolate. The buying mobility of ‘middle-classes’ now mean more people know about and want chocolate. NOW. When you consider a product that has been commoditised down to the gram, and that it is a diminishing resource, and most people LOVE it and eat it a lot, it seems impossible to work out the math of how to think about a sustainable future. That, in my opinion, is abstract mathematics.
‘ Abstraction in mathematics is the process of extracting the underlying essence of a mathematical concept, removing any dependence on real world objects with which it might originally have been connected, and generalizing it so that it has wider applications or matching among other abstract descriptions of equivalent phenomena.’ Wikipedia 2013.
It makes me think of this:
Chocolate is running out. And we might not have choco-treats for our grandkids.
The industrialisation process took more than it gave back in the last 100 years of chocolate. There is no way that the ever-increasing appetite for chocolate and the ability for plantations 20 degrees north and south of the equator can meet every chocoholic’s needs. We have more people in the world, and everyone seems to love chocolate. We yield less cacao every crop naturally. More chocoholics, less cacao. What’s gonna give?
The background:
Deforestation is pumping out carbon from Brazil to Columbia and with our little cacao pods growing north-west of South America in Ecuador, the great forests who protected our favourite treat are no longer able to grow like they used to. We’ve noticed this. We’ve noticed this on our 100 year-old rubber plantations in Papua New Guinea that our family worked on for two generations, and now we notice it in Ecuador in cacao farms that are producing 30% less cacao than they did five years ago when we first investigated the area.
It is an overwhelming topic to ponder. How to save chocolate? And even more funky to ask, what is killing chocolate exactly. Because if we know what is REALLY making the big difference, then theoretically, we could stop it. Later in this series, we will discuss this more in depth. For now, come for a walk on the wild side with me:
The world population is going to be 9 billion people by 2050 and in my experience, at least 99.9% of them will love chocolate.
The need for more chocolate drives environmental damage even further – mono-crop farming and genetic modifications are the two biggest predators in a formally peaceful forest. Can you imagine increasing population (and subsequent chocoholics) while reducing supply (cacao trees are dying). That’s just the cacao trees.
What about the other things you find stuffed into modern chocolate – sugar, milk and other animal fats (go on, check the ingredients list on the backside of your nearest chocolate). Remember the details of what you read on the packet guidelines of your favourite chocolate? This is where it starts to become relevant.
And we start hearing this green-washed word a lot. Sustainability.
Inter-GENERATION-al Equality
Sustainability is not an adjective, it’s a verb.
It is about equity. It is a very unemotional and clear concept. It means that the decisions I make today, with my cacao farming standards, our impact will not influence the opportunities that my children, or our farmer families’ children will have. It is called intergenerational equity, where we can meet our needs without damaging future generations. And this equity is measured via social, environmental, health and economic means.
It’s not a new idea, and it’s not my idea. Wikipedia well explains:
‘Intergenerational equity in economic, psychological, and sociological contexts, is the concept or idea of fairness or justice in relationships between children, youth, adults and seniors, particularly in terms of treatment and interactions. It has been studied in environmental and sociological settings.’ 2013.
Now comes the big question. If I told you that chocolate is running out where we are lucky to harvest out cacao because the temperatures are increasing, there is more unstable earth activity, there is more rain – would you consider your grocery list sustainable?
How did we get into this mess anyways?
Chocolate is running out.
And we might not have choco-treats for our grandkids.
Chocolate came from the wild. Google the word theobroma cacao and you can quickly inform yourself about the tree. It has a rich understory and complex series of insects and birds who give it life and make it sing.
It grows wild and chaotic in a forest with a rich understory and complex series of insects and birds who give it life and make it sing. Wild living, be it plucking cacao fruits from the tree through foraging or hunting for our meat was a normal way of living. But then, we got lazy and our ‘food’ became domesticated. Became hybridised and cacao, is one of the most manipulated species in the world. Cheap chocolate called an end to wild cacao. Pests, domestication, disease and the constant push to feed hungry chocoholics stopped the foraging for food. Then we added ‘things’ to our chocolate, it was no longer about finding a healthy theobroma cacao tree and plucking a few pods, but growing vast fields of cane for sugar and diary cows for milk to dumb down the essential aromas and flavours of natural cacao paste. In the end, the simple elements of cacao became a mess of carbohydrates, fats, and protein with extras being added all over the place in the name of faster, cheaper and sweeter.
How and where chocolate as an industry came from, and what that means to the bigger picture of food is the most important question to ask.
Domestication is a process (which is not necessarily new) and was the first modification that our ancestors made to natural balance.
Domestication: Which apple was chosen from the tree impacted the species propagation through natural selection, with us being the Darwinian predator.
How our food and chocolate sources can be better selected from natural wild species to re-expand the base of what we can eat and enjoy. And this is what we need to keep an eye out for.
By understanding the process of domestication we can learn the importance of maintaining genetic diversity, even within a certain set of plant (and animal) species that currently dominate our global food system; like chocolate with cacao, cane and diary products. What the early 1500s of cacao development in South America can absolutely teach us is, the genetic diversity found in the many varieties of is the key to un-tapping opportunities to overcome disease, pests, and possibly even weather conditions like flood and drought.
‘Domestication (from Latin domesticus) is the process whereby a population of living organisms is changed at the genetic level, through generations of selective breeding, to accentuate traits that ultimately benefit humans.’ Description of domestication from Wikipedia.
Have a think about the role biodiversity plays in food system sustainability and chocolate futures. A great example of diverse farming is from Pye-Smith in his article ‘Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication’ – see the pdf here.
Diamond, J. (2002) Evolution, consequences and future of plant and animal domestication. Nature 418: 700-707. If you want to know about the process and history of domestication, a good article by Jared Diamond looks at species domestication as calls it "the most important development in the past 13,000 years of human history."
http://bit.ly/domesticationbook
After reading this article, what do you think about what role biodiversity plays in food system sustainability and chocolate futures?
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