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Climate change is putting pressure on the rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa beans grow, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies researching other ways to grow cocoa or developing cocoa alternatives.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to produce cocoa in greater quantities, spreading across the tropics from Northern California to Israel.
Plant cell culture company California Cultured is growing cocoa from cell cultures at a facility in West Sacramento, California, with plans to start selling its products next year. It places cocoa bean cells in a vessel with sugar water so they reproduce quickly and mature in a week, compared with the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes, said Alan Perlstein, the company’s chief executive. The process no longer requires much water or hard labor.
“We’re seeing that the demand for chocolate is far greater than what’s available,” Perlstein said. “There’s really no other way the world can significantly increase its cocoa supply or maintain it at a cost-effective level without massive environmental degradation or other significant costs.”
Cocoa trees grow in areas with warm climates and plentiful rainfall about 20 degrees north and south of the equator, including western Africa and South America. The land is expected to dry out because of the extra heat caused by climate change. So scientists, entrepreneurs and chocolate lovers are looking for ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and more resistant to pests — as well as creating chocolatey-tasting cocoa substitutes to meet demand.
The chocolate market is huge, with sales expected to exceed $25 billion in the United States in 2023, according to the National Confectioners Association. Many entrepreneurs are betting that demand will grow faster than cocoa supply. Companies are looking to either boost supply with cell-based cocoa or offer alternatives made from products ranging from oats to carob that are roasted and flavored to give a chocolatey taste to chips or fillings.
Cocoa prices surged earlier this year amid demand and crop problems in West Africa, the world’s biggest cocoa producer, as plant diseases and weather changes affected crops.
“All of this contributes to potential instability in supply, so it’s tempting for these lab-grown or cocoa substitute companies to think about ways to replace the ingredient that we know as chocolate-flavored,” said Carla D. Martin, a lecturer in African and African American studies at Harvard University and executive director of the Fine Cocoa and Chocolate Institute.
Martin said this innovation is driven mainly by demand for chocolate in the US and Europe. He added that three-quarters of the world’s cocoa is grown in western and central Africa, but only 4% is consumed there.
The boost in indoor cocoa production in the U.S. comes after other products, such as chicken meat, have already been grown in labs. It also comes as supermarket shelves are filled with innovative snack options — something cocoa substitute developers say shows people are willing to try something that looks and tastes like a chocolate chip cookie, even if the chip contains a cocoa substitute.
He said they are also hoping to take advantage of growing awareness among consumers about where their food comes from and what it takes to grow it, particularly the use of child labor in the cocoa industry.
Planet A Foods in Planegg, Germany, believes the flavor of mass-selling chocolate comes mainly from the fermentation and roasting that goes into making it, not from the cocoa bean itself. The company’s founders tested ingredients ranging from olives to seaweed and agreed on a blend of oats and sunflower seeds as the best-tasting chocolate substitute, company spokeswoman Jessica Karch said. They named it “Choviva” and it can be used in baked goods, she said.
“Our idea is not to replace high-quality, 80% dark chocolate, but to really provide a lot of different products to the mass market,” Karch said.
Still, while some are trying to create alternative cocoa sources and substitutes, others are trying to boost the supply of cocoa where it grows naturally. Mars, which makes M&M’s and Snickers, has a research facility at the University of California, Davis that aims to make cocoa plants more resilient, said Joanna Hwu, the company’s senior director of cocoa plant science. The facility has a living collection of cocoa trees so scientists can study what makes them disease resistant to help farmers in producing countries and ensure a steady supply of the beans.
“We see this as both an opportunity and our responsibility,” Hwu said.
Efforts are also underway to increase Israel’s cocoa supply. Co-founder Hanne Wolpin said Celeste Bio is taking cocoa bean cells and growing them indoors to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter. In a few years, the company hopes to be able to produce cocoa regardless of the effects of climate change and disease – an effort that has attracted the interest of Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury chocolate.
“We only have a small area, but eventually we will have a farm of bioreactors,” Wolpin said.
It’s similar to an effort underway at California Cultured, which plans to seek permission from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to call its product chocolate because, according to Perlstein, it is chocolate.
He said it may be called brewery chocolate or local chocolate, but it is no less chocolate because it is genetically identical even though it is not plucked from the tree.
“We basically look like we’re growing cocoa — just in a different way,” Perlstein said.
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