Chocolate In Peril

摘要

Is there any treat more decadent, more luxurious than chocolate? Well, it need not be a guilty pleasure - and not just because of growing evidence that eating the stuff can be good for you in some ways. Another reason to enjoy every delicious morsel this holiday is that the chocolate you eat was almost certainly grown on small farms in poor countries. When you buy chocolate, you help poor farmers feed their families. It's a start, at least.rnThe bad news for chocoholics is that the supply could start to run low. Chocolate is made from the fermented, roasted seeds of the cacao tree, whose scientific name isrnTheobroma, or "food of the gods". In recent years, demand has risen worldwide. Meanwhile, diseases destroy a third of the world's cacao crop every year, and that toll is set to get worse as they spread around the globe. What's more, cacao is a rainforest tree with shallow roots that hates drought, and droughts have hit harvests hard in recent years. Things could get worse as climate change gathers pace.