How Companies Big and Small are Fighting to Save Chocolate From Climate-Driven Extinction

Sure, food prices are going up everywhere, but as my fellow chocolate lovers know, prices for this universally loved treat are really going up due to the increasing threat from climate change. Cocoa prices have jumped 136% between July 2022 and February 2024, hitting record highs as extreme weather and plant disease devastate harvests in West Africa, where 70% of the world’s cocoa is grown. In the UK, chocolate prices have risen 43% in just three years, highlighting how climate pressures are reshaping supply chains and consumer costs.

With what is a $130 billion industry under increasing threat, we’re seeing startups and (some) of the big players working on ways to ensure they have access to cocoa in an increasingly climate-threatened future, whether that’s through gene-editing, reproducing chocolate cells in big metal bioreactors, or using new more sustainable alternatives that don’t include cocoa beans at all.

CRISPR

One of the key ways in which chocolate producers can prepare for a climate-challenged future in which cocoa may not find the same hospitable conditions is to change the actual resiliency of the cocoa bean itself through gene editing. This is an area in which the world’s largest chocolate company, Mars, is exploring in partnership with Pairwise, the company which has made a name for itself with its CRISPR-based gene-edited food such as mustard greens and stone-free cherries.

The company recently licensed Pairwise’s Fulcrum platform, which includes gene editing tools and a large trait library that allows scientists to toggle plant traits like a dimmer switch, speeding up what once took decades of conventional breeding.

“At Mars, we believe CRISPR has the potential to improve crops in ways that support and strengthen global supply chains,” said Carl Jones, Plant Sciences Director at Mars. “Our focus is to transparently and responsibly conduct CRISPR research in plant science that helps crops better adapt to climate challenges, disease pressures and resource constraints.”

The idea is to breed cacao trees that can thrive in hotter, drier, and more disease-prone environments, preserving the traditional supply chain while modernizing it with cutting-edge plant science.

Cultivated Chocolate

While Mars works to save the tree, California Cultured is working to bypass it altogether. The Sacramento-based startup is producing real cocoa powder by growing cacao seed coat cells in bioreactors, much like cultivated meat.

“What we’re doing here at California Cultured is really crafting real and sustainable cocoa powder with functional benefits without growing the entire tree and waiting years, and also the negative externalities of traditional agriculture impacting the planet,” said Dr. Steven Lang, the company’s VP of Science and Technology, on the Food Truths Podcast with Eric Schulze.

According to Lang, the way it works is that within seven days, the cells are harvested, dried, and milled into cocoa powder. The process not only avoids deforestation, but also allows California Cultured to boost flavanol content, creating chocolate with enhanced cardiovascular and anti-inflammatory benefits.

“This single bioprocess is producing for us two different products,” Lang said, “one with a high flavanol content, and the other more of a traditional cocoa powder makeup.”

Cocoa-Free Alternatives

Another approach to tinkering with the DNA of cocoa beans or cloning them in bioreactors is to try to forgo using cocoa beans at all. This is an approach that startups like Planet A Foods in Germany and Win-Win in the U.S. are pursuing with formulations for “cocoa-free chocolate” that use the likes of oats, barley, carob, and sunflower seeds.

Planet A’s product, ChoViva, is already hitting shelves in Europe. Through upcycled plant ingredients, both Planet A and Win-Win hope to replicate the flavor and mouthfeel of chocolate at a fraction of the environmental cost.

There have been other approaches to replacing chocolate, such as Perfect Day’s precision-fermented cocoa-free whey. The company, which has undergone some financial struggles in recent years, hasn’t made much news as of late, but it did make announcements with both Nestle and Mars, which were interested in using the company’s precision-fermentation technology.

The bottom line is that some of the big players are exploring alternatives to chocolate, but at this point you have to wonder if they’re doing enough. My guess is that if some of these alternatives show enough promise, we’ll see Big Chocolate increasingly hedging their bets through acquisition and strategic partnerships in the coming years.

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