Quotable: “Chocolate Santa Clauses will be the first hit”

THOMAS LOHNES/AFP

That’s a quote from a very distraught Andreas Jacobs, the chief owner of one of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturers, Barry Callebaut of Switzerland. Marc Kowalsky explains why for Der Spiegel, which is becoming kind of obsessed with stories like this one:

Globalization has now hit the chocolate sector with full force. Just like Barry Callebaut, other chocolate producers are also suffering from the poor hazelnut harvest in Turkey, the growing demand for milk in China and the wheat shortage in the United States — this last caused by more and more of the grain being used to produce biofuel. Meanwhile packaging and transport costs have increased at the same time.

Germany’s critical gummy-bear industry is in trouble, too. The escalating drumbeat of stories about rising food prices around the world is enough to make Niall Ferguson pen a somber ode to Thomas Malthus. But if the upshot of this trend is less consumption of gummy bears, chocolate, and beer, perhaps everything will balance out in the end.