Cocoa supply shortages are driving up prices, putting chocolate producers under pressure. Luckily, Swiss startups have some very smart ideas for keeping chocolate lovers happy.
00:00Chocolate. Irresistible chocolate. Who doesn't love it?
00:05But while demand is growing, the threats to chocolate production are growing too.
00:15Chocolate is in danger because the way it is grown is imbalanced for people and the planet.
00:21The cocoa plant is more and more limited in resources and at risk.
00:25Millions of smallholder farmers earn way too little
00:28and only a fraction of the entire cocoa fruit is used.
00:31These two entrepreneurs from Switzerland have taken it upon themselves to save the chocolate.
00:37We'll show you how one of them gets more out of every cocoa pod.
00:41But first, let's talk about another innovation.
00:44Chocolate grown in tanks.
00:47That's right, Christian Schaub's start-up Food Brewer makes cocoa right here.
00:53The tanks contain water, sugar and nutrients and an ever-multiplying cocoa cell culture.
01:00But how does it work?
01:02Basically, you can take pieces of tissues and isolate it and give it the best nutritious environment and make them grow.
01:14They just remember their plant cells and they multiply easily when you provide the best conditions.
01:23At the end of the brewing process, liquid from the tank is dried and roasted.
01:36The result is cocoa powder.
01:38The technology is able to produce any type of cocoa without large-scale cultivation or the logistics of transportation.
01:47According to Christian Schaub, his chocolate is indistinguishable from the naturally grown kind.
01:53It is not unnatural, it's very natural.
02:00So the cocoa we harvest from our process is real cocoa, real cells.
02:07They're delicious.
02:08They have, by the way, no contaminants or no heavy metals.
02:12They're good and free of contaminants.
02:16And I think this is even better than what you harvest traditionally from classic farms.
02:23But we want to find out what consumers think.
02:26We take to the streets of Switzerland, where citizens consume an average of nine kilograms of chocolate a year.
02:33Would they buy chocolate from a lab?
02:35Chocolate should taste good at a good price.
02:42I wouldn't buy it.
02:44I think it's cool because it's more sustainable.
02:48Of course, cocoa beans don't grow in Switzerland.
02:52They're sourced mainly in West Africa, where around 70% of the world's cocoa grows.
02:58Large areas of rainforest have been cleared.
03:01But crop failures and decreases in arable land due to global warming, not to mention the poor pay,
03:08are forcing many cocoa farmers out of business.
03:11That's where our second Swiss company comes in.
03:16We can incentivize farmers to continue growing cocoa and we disrupt actually the supply chain
03:22that is a possibility of the future because it will not work in the future that smaller farmers work the way they did in the past.
03:29Anienschreiber's company Koach produces juice and flakes from cocoa pulp.
03:35This adds natural sweetness and a fruity note to chocolate and other products.
03:39To do this, the company buys what was previously considered waste, the pods and pulp.
03:46Traditionally, only the cocoa beans are used, while the pulp, here you see a close-up, of the entire fruit as well as the husk are utilized.
04:01So it's a very small portion.
04:03In this entire fruit you've got around 30 of these beans and that account may need 25% of the entire fruit.
04:10The rest as of today cannot be used.
04:12Food Brewer is convinced the future of chocolate isn't in the pod, but rather the tank.
04:18They hope to produce 50,000 times more cocoa on the same area for a fraction of the cost.
04:24But the technology is yet to be approved.
04:27The product is very good today, so the only thing we have to do now is to make it available.
04:34We have to scale it, we have to make sure we produce enough of this delicious chocolate.
04:40If we talk about real chocolate with the full indulgence we want to have, I think there's still a case why we should continue using farmed cocoa beans.
04:50And if we do that, then we should do it in a sustainable way.
