Scientists are now predicting that due to global warming and disease, chocolate may be virtually unavailable by the year 2050. Costa Rica could be one of the lone holdouts in the cultivation of cacao, the source of chocolate worldwide. Sweet!

Cacao trees only like a particular temperature range. They will not grow outside of a very narrow geographic band, 20 degrees North and South of the equator where temperatures, rain, and humidity all stay relatively steady throughout the year – like Costa Rica. This area is threatened by climate change. The planet is getting too hot for chocolate! Attempts to develop more temperature-tolerant hybrids have so far resulted in chocolate with inferior flavor.

Also influencing the decline in chocolate production is disease. Today, about one-third of the annual crop of cacao worldwide succumbs to disease. Most of the affected crops are grown on vast plantations in West Africa, where a single disease can ravage the entire lot. Not so in Costa Rica, where chocolate is usually grown by smaller cacao farmers, in smaller batches. Unfortunately, these farmers are not very well paid, and improved compensation for these workers could jumpstart the industry, and put Costa Rica on the map as an epicenter for cacao production.

Increasing the income of cacao farmers could inspire those who choose to grow coffee or palm oil, to instead grow cacao. Farmers typically earn a mere 10 cents on a $2.00 chocolate bar. That should improve as chocolate becomes more precious, and should double if chocolate catches on in the Chinese and Indian markets, as chocolatiers predict.

Simran Sethi, author of “Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of the Foods We Love”, states  “I understand people bristling at the idea of a $10 bar of chocolate, but the truth is that we are not paying enough for these goods. And until we as consumers are willing to put more money behind these things, and support the companies that are trying to reward farmers with money for sustaining these crops, I don’t think we can alleviate the fear that chocolate will go away.”

Costa Rica’s cacao industry is still recovering from the disastrous epidemic of the Manila Fungus, Frosty Pod Rot, of the 1970s, which put most of the Costa Rican cacao farmers out of business. But recover they have, thanks in large part to Turrialba’s CATIE, Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Learning Center, a cacao genetic improvement lab which has developed the sturdier strains of cacao which just may save the chocolate industry – everywhere.
Before the Manila Virus, there were more than 10,000 hectares of cacao planted in Costa Rica. Today, there are only about 4,500 hectares, but the number is growing slowly.

Says Paul Johnson, owner of Costa Rica’s Caribeans, a bean-to-bar operation located in the country’s Southern Caribbean, “There is the bulk cacao market that exports for most of the world’s chocolates, then there is what we are. We are looking for the Napa Valley effect. We want to create a fine chocolate to properly pay cacao workers.”

Experts agree that Costa Rica is on the cusp of a cacao explosion, which would be extremely valuable for the country. And unlike bananas and pineapples, Costa Rica’s largest agricultural exports, cacao requires very few agrichemicals. Farmers are able to grow it interspersed with bananas, hardwood and other crops.
These are exciting times for Costa Rica’s cacao growers. They could be both saving chocolate, and saving the planet.
Save our planet. It’s the only one with chocolate.