Chocolate is one of the foods that everyone agrees on. In bars or flavored with cakes and sweets, it embodies the cute sin par excellence. If it promotes the proper functioning of the brain (yes!), it is best known for its most negative aspect:its high caloric value, which can lead to weight gain and disorders of the cardiovascular system. But lovers will soon no longer have to force themselves to resist their cravings, because chocolate could disappear from the face of the earth within the next 40 years. Cocoa can only be grown in a very limited part of the globe, in tropical areas near the Equator where temperatures, humidity and rainfall remain roughly constant throughout the world. 'year. More than half of global production now comes from two West African countries:Ghana and Ivory Coast, as Business Insider explains. . But this region will unfortunately no longer be suitable for cocoa within the next decades.
Indeed, the rise in temperatures expected by the 2050s would leave no choice but to “move” the plantations to mountainous terrain, more than 300 meters above their current location. There is a small snag though:much of this land is made up of conserved natural habitats for wildlife, as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Affairs Administration reminded us. The Mars group – which owns Snickers, M&M's, Pedigree and Dove among others – has launched initiatives to counter this alarming development:in September 2017, it unveiled its $1 billion project which aims to reduce the carbon footprint by 60% carbon from all of its activities. At the beginning of 2018, the company, which weighs some 35 billion dollars, joined forces with scientists from the University of California to develop a technology called CRISPR, which makes it possible to make ultra-precise genetic changes. The collaboration aims to adjust the cocoa seedlings to make them resistant to the climate, which is becoming ever drier and hotter. CRISPR could also be a solution for developing countries, whose populations survive thanks to the consumption of plants that are also threatened by global warming. We can only hope that the tests prove conclusive... Until then, savor the chocolates received during the end-of-year celebrations!
