WEST SACRAMENTO, California — 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.
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.
“We see just the demand of chocolate monstrously outstripping what is going to be available,” Perlstein said.
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.
Scientists, entrepreneurs and chocolate lovers are coming up with ways to grow cocoa and make the crop more resilient and more resistant to pests.
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 percent is consumed there, she said.
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 spokesman.
“The idea is not to replace the high quality, 80 percent 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.
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.
“We only have a small field, but eventually, we will have a farm of bioreactors,” Volpin said.
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