Chocolate, Wine Among Foodstuffs to Be Hit by Climate Change
Over half of the world's chocolate supply comes from Ghana and the Ivory Coast in west Africa, an area a 2011 study said would look vastly different by 2050. Temperatures will rise while water supplies will fall, resulting in cocoa trees with a much lower yield.
Suitable regions for growing cocoa will shrink considerably, and growers are likely to refocus from volume to quality - so we should see far less chocolate, but it will probably be tastier.
The study expects chocolate supplies to significant decline by 2030, but effects could be felt even sooner.
Indeed, thanks to rising demand and tree disease we are already in a chocolate deficit, eating more of it than we can currently produce. Two of the world's largest chocolate makers expect that deficit to reach 1 million tonnes by just 2020.
Beth MacKenzie