Chocolate's Future Could Hinge on Success of Growing Cocoa Not Just in The Tropics, But in The Lab

Climate change is stressing rainforests where the highly sensitive cocoa bean grows, but chocolate lovers need not despair, say companies that are researching other ways to grow cocoa or develop cocoa substitutes.
Scientists and entrepreneurs are working on ways to make more cocoa that stretch well beyond the tropics, from Northern California to Israel, The Associated Press said.
California Cultured, a plant cell culture company, is growing cocoa from cell cultures at a facility in West Sacramento, California, with plans to start selling its products next year. It puts cocoa bean cells in a vat with sugar water so they reproduce quickly and reach maturity in a week rather than the six to eight months a traditional harvest takes, said Alan Perlstein, the company's chief executive. The process also no longer requires as much water or arduous labor.
“We see just the demand of chocolate monstrously outstripping what is going to be available,” Perlstein said. “There's really no other way that we see that the world could significantly increase the supply of cocoa or still keep it at affordable levels without extensive either environmental degradation or some significant other cost.”
Cocoa trees grow about 20 degrees north and south of the equator in regions with warm weather and abundant rain, including West Africa and South America. Climate change is expected to dry out the land under the additional heat. So scientists, entrepreneurs and chocolate-lovers are coming up with ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and more resistant to pests — as well as craft chocolatey-tasting cocoa alternatives to meet demand.
The market for chocolate is massive with sales in the United States surpassing $25 billion in 2023, according to the National Confectioners Association. Many entrepreneurs are betting on demand growing faster than the supply of cocoa. Companies are looking at either bolstering the supply with cell-based cocoa or offering alternatives made from products ranging from oats to carob that are roasted and flavored to produce a chocolatey taste for chips or filling.
The price of cocoa soared earlier this year because of demand and troubles with the crop in West Africa due to plant disease and changes in weather. The region produces the bulk of the world’s cocoa.
“All of this contributes to a potential instability in supply, so it is attractive to these lab-grown or cocoa substitute companies to think of ways to replace that ingredient that we know of as chocolatey-flavored,” said Carla D. Martin, executive director of the Fine Cacao and Chocolate Institute and a lecturer in African and African American Studies at Harvard University.
The innovation is largely driven by demand for chocolate in the US and Europe, Martin said. While three-quarters of the world's cocoa is grown in West and Central Africa, only 4% is consumed there, she said.
The push to produce cocoa indoors in the US comes after other products, such as chicken meat, have already been grown in labs. It also comes as supermarket shelves fill with evolving snack options — something that developers of cocoa alternatives say shows people are ready to try what looks and tastes like a chocolate chip cookie even if the chip contains a cocoa substitute.
They said they also are hoping to tap into rising consciousness 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, contends the taste of mass market chocolate is derived largely from the fermentation and roasting in making it, not the cocoa bean itself. The company's founders tested out ingredients ranging from olives to seaweed and settled on a mix of oats and sunflower seeds as the best tasting chocolate alternative, said Jessica Karch, a company spokesperson. They called it “ChoViva” and it can be subbed into baked goods, she said.
“The idea is not to replace the high quality, 80% dark chocolate, but really to have a lot of different products in the mass market,” Karch said.
Yet while some are seeking to create alternative cocoa sources and substitutes, others are trying to bolster the supply of cocoa where it naturally grows. Mars, which makes M&Ms and Snickers, has a research facility at University of California, Davis aimed at making cocoa plants more resilient, said Joanna Hwu, the company's senior director of cocoa plant science. The facility hosts a living collection of cocoa trees so scientists can study what makes them disease-resistant to help farmers in producing countries and ensure a stable supply of beans.
“We see it as an opportunity, and our responsibility,” Hwu said.
In Israel, efforts to expand the supply of cocoa are also underway. Celleste Bio is taking cocoa bean cells and growing them indoors to produce cocoa powder and cocoa butter, said co-founder Hanne Volpin. In a few years, the company expects to be able to produce cocoa regardless of the impact of climate change and disease — an effort that has drawn interest from Mondelez, the maker of Cadbury chocolate.
“We only have a small field, but eventually, we will have a farm of bioreactors,” Volpin said.
That's similar to the effort under way at California Cultured, which plans to seek permission from the US Food and Drug Administration to call its product chocolate, because, according to Perlstein, that's what it is.
It might wind up being called brewery chocolate, or local chocolate, but chocolate no less, he said, because it's genetically identical though not harvested from a tree.
“We basically see that we're growing cocoa — just in a different way,” Perlstein said.

A small charity on the Kenyan coast has become vital to the region's majestic turtle population, saving thousands from poachers, fishermen's nets and ever-worsening plastic pollution.

On the beach of the seaside town of Watamu, it takes four men to heave the huge Loggerhead sea turtle into the back of a car.

She has just been saved from a fishing tackle and will be taken to a nearby clinic to be checked for injuries, then weighed, tagged and released back into the sea.

A Kenyan NGO, Local Ocean Conservation (LOC), has been doing this work for almost three decades and has carried out some 24,000 rescues.

"Every time I release a turtle, it's a really great joy for me. My motivation gets stronger and stronger," said Fikiri Kiponda, 47, who has been part of LOC's 20-odd staff for 16 years.

LOC began life in 1997 as a group of volunteers who hated seeing the creatures being eaten or dying in nets.

Turtles are still poached for their shells, meat and oil.

But through the charity's awareness campaigns in schools and villages, "perceptions have significantly changed", said Kiponda.

LOC, which relies mostly on donations, compensates fishermen for bringing them injured turtles.

More than 1,000 fishermen participate in the scheme and mostly do so for the sake of conservation, the charity emphasizes, since the reward does not offset the hours of lost labor.

- Floating turtles -

At the NGO's nearby clinic, health coordinator Lameck Maitha, 34, says turtles are often treated for broken bones and tumors caused by a disease called Fibropapillomatosis.

One current in-patient is Safari, a young Olive Ridley turtle around 15 years old -- turtles can live beyond 100 -- transported by plane from further up the coast.

She arrived in a dire state, barely alive and with a bone protruding from her flipper, which ultimately had to be amputated -- likely the result of fighting to free herself from a fisherman's net.

Safari has been recovering well and the clinic hopes she can return to the sea.

Other frequent tasks include removing barnacles that embed themselves in shells and flippers, weakening their host.

But a growing danger is plastic pollution.

If a turtle eats plastic, it can create a blockage that in turn creates gas, making the turtle float and unable to dive.

In these cases, the clinic gives the turtle laxatives to clear out its system.

"We are seeing more and more floating turtles because the ocean has so much plastic," said Maitha.

- Survivors -

LOC also works to protect 50 to 100 nesting sites, threatened by rising sea levels.

Turtles travel far and wide but always lay their eggs on the beach where they were born, and Watamu is one of the most popular spots.

Every three or four years, they produce hundreds of eggs, laid during multiple sessions over several months, that hatch after around 60 days.

The charity often relocates eggs that have been laid too close to the sea.

Marine biologist Joey Ngunu, LOC's technical manager, always calls the first to appear Kevin.

"And once Kevin comes out, the rest follow," he said with a smile, describing the slow, clumsy procession to the water, preferably at night to avoid predators as much as possible.

Only one in a thousand reaches adulthood of 20-25 years.

"Living in the sea as a turtle must be crazy. You have to face so many dangers, fish and poachers, and now human pressure with plastic and commercial fishing," he said.

"Turtles are definitely survivors."

Chocolate's Future Could Hinge on Success of Growing Cocoa Not Just in The Tropics, But in The Lab