‘World running out of chocolate’

MANILA, Philippines - Two of the world’s largest chocolate makers have warned of chocolate deficits by 2020, with the demand for chocolate expected to outstrip supply by an additional one million tons every 10 years.

 A Bloomberg article posted Friday said chocolate makers Mars Inc. and Barry Callebaut AG reported that the lack of supply is due to disease, drought, new markets and the displacement of cacao by more productive crops such as corn and rubber.

 The world consumed more cocoa than it was able to produce in 2013. For this year supply “barely kept pace” with the recent upswing in demand for cocoa despite an “unexpected bumper crop,” Bloomberg reported.

The price of cocoa was pegged at an average of $1,465 a ton from 1993 to 2007. It increased by 87 percent with an average of $2,736 a ton during the subsequent six years.

The Philippines’ supply reached a deficit of 44,349 metric tons in 2005 against local consumption and the production was nearly 5,000 metric tons, records from the Bureau of Agricultural Research showed.

 Hershey Co. predicted China would be the second largest market next to the United States by 2017. India’s consumption has grown from 25,000 tons in 2010 to 40,000 this year, while Brazil showed an increase in consumption from 161,000 tons in 2010 to 198,000 in 2014.