Feeling stressed? Sad? Hormonal? Reach for that oh-so-yummy sweet, smooth, goodness of chocolate. Yessss!! It’s my favorite, too. However, is the chocolate industry yet another bad guy in the growing list of environment-hacking products and industries?
Cocoa plants are natives of rainforests. The plants typically grow in the shade, far beneath the sheltering canopies of the forests. However, this natural method of growing cocoa isn’t so efficient for raking in profits. Therefore, cocoa bean growing countries such as Ghana hack down the forests to plant cocoa under the directly blaring sun. The regular lifespan of the tree is between 75 and 100 years. Perhaps the new “improved” way of growing these plants makes planting and harvesting more efficient, but it shortens the plant’s life span to as little as 30 years. When the tree dies, the soil is stripped of nutrients, and farmers are forced to cut down more forests for more land to plant more trees.
How long can they keep this process up? Some people, including myself, are becoming skeptical. I’d be willing to bet that sometime in the not so distant future, the price of chocolate will begin to climb as resources continue to dwindle. Eventually, perhaps even within the next twenty years, chocolate may become a very rare and expensive treat.
We can enjoy our chocolate now before it disappears, or we can stop enjoying it now so it doesn’t continue to destroy parts of our world.
mmmmmmm… chocolate… could you live without it?
The droughts in South America have raised the costs of coffee and cocoa. So, the poor beyond poor farmers are being forced to try and find ways to grow more for less.
The only reason I know this is because I like my coffee, lol.
-acertainsaint-
Wow. And I thought this would be an entry about getting fat...
There are new planting methods that are being used that could eradicate such a problem if these countries had the funds to do it. Just look at the exhibits in that one ride in Epcot, Disney. They show tomato plants growing upside down and flourishing! Surely we could give the poor cocoa plants some shade. Or at least provide them with strongly tinted sunglasses! :)
~ *~
This is a signature, an automated thingy that pops up when I comment, not a demand to see my blog!
Mind Control is Easier Than You Think
Wow. I'm not sure I'd be able to live without a chocolate fix every now and then...what a scary thought that our chocolate supply may dwindle to nothing!