Don’t panic but… chocolate could run out in 40 years

Not the news we wanted to hear.

Experts have warned that chocolate could become extinct in 40 years. Global warming has caused the reduction in cocoa plants due to rising temperatures. According to The Daily Mail, the trees need specific conditions to grow but with the rising temperatures, they're failing to do so.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is warning that if the temperatures keep rising by 2.1C every year over the next 30 years it could wipe out the cocoa plants entirely.

They're speculating that there will be no more by 2050. Doug Hawkins, from Hardman Agribusiness, reckons the methods in farming, which haven't changed in years, are also to blame. He has said:

"Unlike other tree crops that have benefited from the development of modern, high yielding cultivars and crop management techniques to realise their genetic potential, more than 90 per cent of the global cocoa crop is produced by smallholders on subsistence farms with unimproved planting material.

All the indicators are that we could be looking at a chocolate deficit of 100,000 tonnes a year in the next few years."