A Crisis Of Chocolate

Now, before you panic (like I did), keep in mind that this dire prediction has been made before. I even wrote about it in a past column. The prediction: a chocolate shortage.

Okay, you can go ahead and panic now.

 

Yeah, it didn’t prove to be so bad after 2014, but this is 2023. Everything is proving to be bad in 2023.

The reason for the shortage is, of course, climate change. About two-thirds of the world’s entire supply of cocoa comes from Ivory Coast and Ghana in Africa. We think of Africa as a dry place, but West Africa had been getting way more rainfall than usual, leading to the lowest cocoa harvests in decades. The rain makes cocoa flowers fall off before they can bud, and can also cause a cocoa-killing fungi.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, there’s a sugar shortage thanks to the climate condition called El Nino. So with two of the main ingredients in short supply, major candy manufacturers are raising prices to compensate for a 46 year high in cocoa value. And worse, just before Christmas. What are the odds?

Hm. Just before Christmas. What are the odds?

 

This is giving me S’More ideas.

 

I smell a rat, here, instead of a chocolate bunny.

What if it’s a conspiracy, designed to put money into the pockets of fat chocolate industrialists. (I’m not being insulting: I just assume anyone who deals with chocolate all day may end up fat.) Maybe they’re hoarding all the cocoa and sugar, to make the prices go up? What if the Bilderberg meetings were nothing more than an organized plan to get chocolate into the hands of its members? (which would require a napkin, of course.)

I can see them all sitting around, dipping chocolate into a chocolate fountain, chortling in the way bad guys do. That’s why Bill Clinton went over there, to donate his supply of chocolate after Hillary bugged him to eat better. Their Number One is probably a guy named CocoaFinger. Where’s James Bond when you need him?

“CocoaFinger, do you expect me to talk?”

“No, Mr. Bond! I expect you to snack! Try the left Kit Kats, they’re so much better than the right ones.”

 

Even 007 loves homemade brownies. Stirred, not shaken.

 

Look, we’ve put up with pandemics, wars, and so many idiots in Washington that the whole town looks like a Three Stooges movie. I’m done putting up with things. Do they think we’ll sit idly by while they stockpile Wonka Bars that rightfully belong in my mouth? I mean,our mouth? Mouths?

It’s time for a revolution.

Let’s make the illuminati illuminate their secret society Snickers silos, stat. We want free M&Ms, not Free Masons! And quickly, before we all waste down to Skull and Bones! The Knights Templar don’t scare us, and neither would a visit from the Men In Brown. All we’re scared of is low blood sugar. They can have our chocolate when they pry it from our sticky, delicious hands!

We will not go quietly into vanilla flavored desserts!

We will not let our chocolate vanish without a fight!

We’re going to snack on. We’re going to survive. Today we celebrate INTERNATIONAL CHOCOLATE DAY!

Okay, that’s actually in September, but it’s the principle.

Say, did anyone just hear the music from “Independence Day”?

 

Oh my gosh, the hidden chocolate supply–that’s The Secret of Oak Island!