Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate

Summary

Short Wave: Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate
Released August 1, 2025

In the episode titled "Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate," NPR's Short Wave delves deep into the precarious state of the global chocolate industry amidst escalating climate challenges. Hosts Emily Kwong and Regina Barber engage in an insightful conversation with Yasmin Tayag, a food, health, and science writer for The Atlantic, to unravel the multifaceted issues threatening one of the world's most beloved treats.

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1. Introduction to the Episode

The episode sets the stage by highlighting recent developments in the chocolate market, notably Hershey Company's decision to raise candy prices due to soaring cocoa costs. This serves as a timely entry point to explore the underlying causes and future implications for both producers and consumers.

Emily Kwong introduces Yasmin Tayag:
"Yasmin has been keeping eyes on the evolving chocolate industry for a while. Retail prices for chocolate are soaring as yearly harvests of cocoa are dipping." [02:10]

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2. Yasmin Tayag’s Exploration of the Chocolate Industry

Yasmin Tayag shares her personal connection to chocolate and transitions into her professional observations about the industry's transformation. She recounts a taste test of an alternative chocolate product, Choviva, which contains no cocoa, underscoring the industry's shift towards innovative solutions in response to cocoa shortages.

Yasmin Tayag describes the Choviva chocolate:
"Their chocolate is notable because it contains no cocoa." [01:43]

Emily Kwong adds:
"It's giving honestly the flavors of my childhood." [01:56]

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3. FDA Standards and Definitions of Chocolate

A critical point of discussion revolves around the regulatory standards that define what can be classified as chocolate. Yasmin elaborates on the FDA's stringent criteria, which mandate a minimum of 10% cocoa content for a product to be officially recognized as chocolate.

Yasmin Tayag explains:
"According to the FDA, chocolate has to contain at minimum 10% cocoa." [04:14]

Emily Kwong seeks clarification:
"And if it's not, it doesn't get to be the big C, the chocolate." [04:22]

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4. From Bean to Bar: The Chocolate Production Process

The episode provides a comprehensive overview of the intricate journey from cocoa trees to the final chocolate bar. Yasmin details the delicate nature of cocoa cultivation, emphasizing the trees' specific climatic needs and the labor-intensive processes involved in harvesting and processing the beans.

Yasmin Tayag describes cocoa trees:
"Cocoa trees are known to be very finicky, very fussy plants. They like things to be just so and so." [04:40]

She continues to outline the production stages:
"First step, remove the bean from the fruit. Then the beans are fermented... roasted... split open and that husk is removed... ground down to release cocoa mass... tempering happens... turn that into something like a bar or a chocolate shelf or an egg." [06:13-07:52]

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5. Climate Change's Devastating Impact on Cocoa Production

A significant portion of the discussion centers on how climate change is wreaking havoc on cocoa production, primarily in West Africa—the heartland of global cocoa supply. Yasmin highlights the increasing unpredictability of weather patterns, which fosters the spread of diseases like black pod and swollen shoot virus, both of which severely diminish cocoa yields.

Yasmin Tayag explains:
"The weather is becoming really erratic where chocolate is supposed to grow. Most of the world's chocolate comes from two countries in West Africa... heavier than usual rainfall... black pod disease... swollen shoot virus." [08:03-09:38]

She underscores the severe consequences:
"Once it's on a plantation, it spreads rapidly. It can cross into other people's plantations, and the only way to get rid of it is to uproot all the trees and start fresh." [09:38]

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6. Socioeconomic Challenges Faced by Cocoa Farmers

Beyond environmental threats, Yasmin sheds light on the dire socioeconomic conditions plaguing cocoa farmers in Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. She points out the aging farmer population, inadequate compensation, lack of access to essential resources, and the prevalence of child labor and illegal mining as pressing issues that undermine the industry's sustainability.

Yasmin Tayag discusses farmer struggles:
"They’re paid so little for what they do... set by the governments of those countries... not able to invest in irrigation... often children, people under 15 years old... illegal gold mining." [10:26-11:43]

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7. Supply and Demand Dynamics: Rising Prices and Shrinking Portions

The episode navigates the imbalance between dwindling cocoa supplies and escalating global demand for chocolate. Yasmin references statistics indicating an expected 11% drop in global cocoa production and an over 11% price increase for chocolate products in U.S. retail stores. This disparity is leading to higher chocolate prices and reduced package sizes as companies attempt to offset costs.

Yasmin Tayag forecasts consumer impact:
"Chocolate prices are rising and chocolate is getting smaller, or at least like the package sizes are getting smaller." [13:16-13:41]

Emily Kwong suggests consumer shifts:
"Maybe you try out some alternative chocolates." [13:45]

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8. The Rise of Alternative Chocolates and Industry Responses

In response to the challenges, the industry is experimenting with alternative chocolate products that either reduce reliance on traditional cocoa or completely eliminate it. Yasmin compares these alternatives to the "fake meat of chocolate," prompting consumers to reconsider their long-standing preferences and the underlying reasons for chocolate’s widespread popularity.

Yasmin Tayag reflects on alternatives:
"It's kind of like the fake meat of chocolate... really makes you ask what made this kind of chocolate so ubiquitous in the first place." [13:45-14:10]

She also emphasizes the potential role of major chocolate companies in mitigating supply issues by investing in sustainable practices:
"The big chocolate makers like Hershey's and Cadbury will finally realize that they have to invest in these small farms if they want to keep up that supply." [11:53-12:48]

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9. Future Outlook and Consumer Choices

The episode concludes with a contemplation of the future landscape of chocolate consumption. With no immediate solution to balance supply and demand, consumers may experience higher prices, reduced quantities, and a shift towards alternative products. The sustainability of the chocolate industry hinges on both corporate responsibility and innovative consumer behaviors.

Yasmin Tayag adds:
"None of that is guaranteed. And for now, there is no real way to square the growing demand with the decreased supply." [11:53-12:48]

Emily Kwong wraps up the conversation:
"Yasmin Tayag is a reporter for the Atlantic. Thank you so much for talking to us." [14:10]

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10. Production Credits

The episode was produced and fact-checked by Burleigh McCoy, edited by Rebecca Ramirez, with Ko Takasugi Chernovin as the audio engineer.

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Conclusion

"Climate Change Is Here For Your Chocolate" offers a compelling examination of how environmental, economic, and social factors intertwine to challenge the future of chocolate. Through expert insights and detailed analysis, the episode underscores the urgent need for sustainable practices within the industry and conscious choices by consumers to preserve this cherished indulgence.

Transcript

[Emily Kwong]

This message comes from Greenlight. Ready to start talking to your kids about financial literacy? Meet Greenlight, the debit card and money app that teaches kids and teens how to earn, save, spend wisely and invest. Start your risk free [e-mail] NPR hey, short waivers. Regina Barber here. Last week the Hershey Company announced that it was raising its candy prices because of rising cocoa costs. So we thought it'd be a good time to revisit a 2024 episode where my co host, Emily Kwong talks about the shrinking future of chocolate and what CL change has to do with all of it. Here's the show. You're listening to Short Wave from npr. Chocolate is not a topic of deep scientific inquiry. Or is it? Okay, this is melting in a completely different way. I have a confession to make. I keep an emergency chocolate stash in my pantry at all times. I eat it like it's my job. But I met someone recently for whom chocolate is her job. Yasmin Tayag is a food, health and science writer for the Atlantic. And last week she led me in a chocolate taste test.

[Yasmin Tayag]

It tastes like a chocolate pastry.

[Emily Kwong]

I wonder if that's the oats because Yasmin recently wrote about how the chocolate industry is changing. Before her reporting, she called herself a fan of cheap chocolates.

[Yasmin Tayag]

One of my guiltiest pleasures is the Cadbury Creme egg and it's just pure sweetness. It makes me feel like a five year old kid hyped up on sugar at Easter time.

[Emily Kwong]

But for this taste test, Yasmin wanted me to try something from a Germany based company called Planet A Foods. Their product, Choviva.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Their chocolate is notable because it contains no cocoa.

[Emily Kwong]

The product is made mostly from oats.

[Yasmin Tayag]

The color looks a little darker than a typical milk chocolate bar to me.

[Emily Kwong]

And it tasted yummy. We really liked the alt chocolate peanut butter cups in particular. It's giving honestly the flavors of my childhood.

[Yasmin Tayag]

If you didn't tell me this wasn't chocolate, I would have no idea.

[Emily Kwong]

Yasmin has been keeping eyes on the evolving chocolate industry for a while. Retail prices for chocolate are soaring as yearly harvests of cocoa are dipping. And when she noticed the price of cocoa was on par with the price of copper, she had to write a story.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Especially as I realized that it was going to have such a potentially have such a huge impact on the chocolate that I eat all the time.

[Emily Kwong]

So today on the show, big changes are ahead in the chocolate industry. We get into the science of cocoa trees, the struggles that farmers face in a changing climate, and what consumers can expect. From bean to bar. I'm Emily Kwong and you're listening to Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR Foreign.

[Regina Barber]

This message comes from Schwab. Everyone has moments when they could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education and human help when you need it. Support for NPR and the following message come from Edward Jones. What does it mean to live a rich life? It means brave first leaps, tearful goodbyes, and everything in between. With over a hundred years of experience navigating the ups and downs of the market and of life, your Edward Jones financial advisor will be there to help you move ahead with confidence. Because with all you've done to find your rich, they'll do all they can to help you keep enjoying it. EDWARD Jones Member, SIPC this message comes from NPR sponsor State Farm. In the market for small business insurance, State Farm agents can help you create a personalized plan that fits your business needs and budget. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Talk to your local agent today.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay, Yasmin, I learned a lot from your article about chocolate, the state of the chocolate industry and the fact that there's an actual definition of what can be deemed chocolate. This is an FDA standard. What is it?

[Yasmin Tayag]

Yes, according to the FDA, chocolate has to contain at minimum 10% cocoa.

[Emily Kwong]

And if it's not, it doesn't get to be the big C, the chocolate.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Okay, it doesn't get to be the big C, but it can be chocolate flavored or, you know, chocolate like.

[Emily Kwong]

Got it. Well, let's back up to chocolate itself and where it comes from. It comes from a plant. Tell me about these trees and where they grow.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Let me preface this by saying cocoa trees are known to be very finicky, very fussy plants. They like things to be just so and so. One of their most important characteristics is they only grow within about 20 degrees north and south of the equator. That's not a lot of area. The trees like this region because they have very specific requirements for heat and moisture. They're kind of tall, you know, at least taller than a basketball net, sometimes much taller. They tend to have a sort of rounded, squat appearance because of the way their branches grow. They've got really beautiful dark green, glossy leaves, and hanging from the branches are these pods. To me, they look like deflated footballs, kind of elongated, a little wrinkly. They can be football colored or sometimes brighter colors like red or orange or yellow or even purple. And it's inside these pods that we get the cocoa bean. What you see instead of like brown beans are they look like white fruit, kind of like lychees.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay. How big are they?

[Yasmin Tayag]

About date sized. Okay. They're kind of fluffy. So this is the pulp surrounding the cocoa bean, and that has to be removed before, you know, the processing can begin.

[Emily Kwong]

What is the process? What are some of the major steps?

[Yasmin Tayag]

As I learned, it's so complicated to get from fruit to chocolate bar.

[Emily Kwong]

So the final product is nothing like the fruit in so many ways.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Not at all. So first step, remove the bean from the fruit. Then the beans are fermented. And what fermentation does is it helps the flavor develop and gets rid of any bitter tastes.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay. So like, the flavor of chocolate is really coming from this fermentation process.

[Yasmin Tayag]

That's the first step. There's so much more. So for after fermentation, then you dry the beans, then they are roasted so much like coffee beans. These raw beans get most of their flavor from the way they're roasted, the temperature at which they're roasted, and for how long. But it has this husk on it that you don't want. So the bean is split open and that husk is removed, and what you're left with is the cocoa nib. This cocoa nib is the edible part. This is later ground down to release cocoa mass, like cocoa solids, plus cocoa butter, which is the fat that comes out of this, this stage. And later you might start adding milk and sugar and other flavoring agents, more refining. Then tempering happens, which is the process of, like, heating and cooling chocolate so that we get the snap that we want and that glossy coating on it. And then finally you can turn that into something like a bar or a chocolate shelf or an egg.

[Emily Kwong]

Okay, okay, okay. You know, one of the big takeaways from your article is that climate change is coming for chocolate. It is already impacting the chocolate industry right now. What does that look like?

[Yasmin Tayag]

So many things are happening, but the big thing I would say is that the weather is becoming really erratic where chocolate is supposed to grow. Most of the world's chocolate comes from two countries in West Africa. That is Ivory coast and Ghana. So when the weather there gets weird, that really affects the entire global supply. And so what we've been seeing lately is heavier than usual rainfall. And what this did last year was create the conditions for a fungus to spread that causes something called black pod disease. You'll see little blotches appear on the cocoa pods as they're on the trees, and slowly they'll just turn Black. They'll rotate on the plant, fall off. That tanks production. And then earlier this year, you had drier than usual conditions. It sucked all the moisture out of these plantations that the trees require, and production started to dip. So all of this is happening as another really severe virus is decimating cocoa. And this is called swollen shoot virus. It causes these bulges on the trees and ultimately kills them over time. And what's really devastating about this particular disease is that once it's on a plantation, it spreads rapidly. It can cross into other people's plantations, and the only way to get rid of it is to uproot all the trees and start fresh.

[Emily Kwong]

This just sounds untenable for any chocolate farmer.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Totally. Another way that climate change could change chocolate as we know it is that it might change the flavor of the beans. So the cocoa plants are very sensitive to fluctuations in temperature. And, you know, as the climate becomes more erratic, this could result in inconsistent flavors coming out in the cocoa beans themselves. And the way the cocoa industry might deal with this is by roasting the beans to a really high temperature to sort of eliminate all discrepancies. But it might also get rid of a lot of the complexity in the beans, resulting in maybe more boring, less interesting chocolate.

[Emily Kwong]

So you were saying earlier that most of the world's chocolate supply comes from just two countries, Ghana and Cote d'. Ivoire. And you say in your article that in Ghana, the average cocoa farmer is close to 50 years old and that a new generation of farmers there is needed to maintain the cocoa supply. But young people may just walk away from the industry. What other issues do cocoa farmers in this region face beyond climate and beyond an aging workforce?

[Yasmin Tayag]

Yeah, I mean, the biggest thing is they're paid so little for what they do, in part because the prices for cocoa that they earn, they don't totally reflect the market. They're set by the governments of those countries at the beginning of the growing season. You know, they don't have money to buy, you know, pesticides. They aren't able to invest in irrigation. It is a really bad industry to be in. Somebody's got to pick these pods. And unfortunately, it's often children, people under 15 years old, sometimes farmers, you know, out of desperation because they're not getting enough money for their crop. Lease out land for illegal gold mining for the farmer, it is a way to make a little bit more money just to get by.

[Emily Kwong]

Meanwhile, you say in your piece that demand for chocolate is rising.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Yes.

[Emily Kwong]

So how are you squaring this reality with that?

[Yasmin Tayag]

The way things stand right now, there isn't going to be enough chocolate. But there are a couple of things that could change potentially. I think a big thing is that the cocoa growing regions could expand out of West Africa into other parts of the world along that, along the equator, chocolate makers might end up using less cocoa. Or you know what, what the hope is for people who are still feeling a little more optimistic about the cocoa industry is that the big chocolate makers like Hershey's and Cadbury will finally realize that they have to invest in these small farms if they want to keep up that supply that they've had for this long. And that would mean, you know, paying them a living wage. But none of that is guaranteed. And for now, there is no real way to square the growing demand with the decreased supply.

[Emily Kwong]

Yeah. And your piece highlights some statistics from this Reuters article that I want to share that the International Cocoa Organization expects global cocoa production to fall by nearly 11% this season. And then, according to a market research firm named Circana, US retail stores charged over 11% more for chocolate products last year versus 2022. So given all this, what do you think consumers are going to see from chocolate?

[Yasmin Tayag]

I think we're already starting to see it. You know, chocolate prices are rising and chocolate is getting smaller, or at least like the package sizes are getting smaller. The chocolate companies have to make up the cost somehow if cocoa is really costing that much more. And so maybe more peanut butter cups with a lot of peanut butter and less chocolate, or like chocolate bars with so many almonds and fruits in them.

[Emily Kwong]

Or maybe you try out some alternative chocolates.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Yeah, the alternative chocolate space is interesting. It's kind of like the fake meat of chocolate. I think for those of us who've had the privilege of eating chocolate like this our whole lives, you know, it really makes you ask what made this kind of chocolate so ubiquitous in the first place.

[Emily Kwong]

Yasmin Tayag is a reporter for the Atlantic. Thank you so much for talking to us.

[Yasmin Tayag]

Thanks so much for having me.

[Emily Kwong]

You can find a link to Yasmin's article in our episode notes. This episode was produced and fact checked by Burleigh McCoy and edited by our showrunner, Rebecca Ramirez. Ko Takasugi Chernovin was the audio engineer. I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to shortwave from NPR. This message comes from LinkedIn ads. One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. That's why you need LinkedIn ads. You can target your buyers by job title, company role, seniority and skills. All the professionals you need to reach in one place to get a $100 credit on your next campaign. So you can try it yourself, just go to LinkedIn.com results. That's LinkedIn.com results. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads.

[Regina Barber]

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