Comment Wonder what planet the 'extra' cocoa comes from (Score 1) 323
Chocolate deficits, whereby farmers produce less cocoa than the world eats, are becoming the norm. Already, we are in the midst of what could be the longest streak of consecutive chocolate deficits in more than 50 years. It also looks like deficits aren't just carrying over from year-to-year—the industry expects them to grow. Last year, the world ate roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced.
So last year we imported 70 000 tons of cocoa from... outside Earth ? Or are there long-term stocks of cocoa somewhere ? Because if the latter, then getting rid of those stocks year after year and moving to a tighter production chain makes a lot of sense, and fits in the trend of decreasing transaction costs. It could also be a sign that producers expect their cocoa products to sell less well in the future, or raw cocoa to become cheaper. In any case, the claims in TFA make little sense.