This May Not End Well

According to this story in the online edition of The Independent, the price of chocolate may be quite high come 2030. The basic upshot is that growing cocoa trees is hard work and the companies that buy their products don't pay beans (heh), so cocoa farmers are either headed into cities or selling their products to biofuel companies.

Since the story is in a British newspaper, it uses pounds. The one-pound amount cited as the current cost is about $1.60, and the seven-pound prediction for the worst-case scenario is $11.28. A sweet trip to the candy shop might wind up necessitating a bank loan.

Of course, the prediction assumes that the companies won't figure out their problem and start offering financial incentives to cocoa farmers to get them to stick it out. Or that they won't develop artificially-flavored substitutes impossible to tell from the real thing. The incentives to do so will be powerful, because buying a dozen roses and a box of...what? Oranges? Apples? Kiwi? ...is not going to get boyfriends and husbands out of the doghouses into which they have put themselves. And the first time the head of one of those companies tries that little trick, he's going to have a lot of extra time on his hands to urge his corporate scientists to get crackin'.