Crypto News: Supply Lines: Chocolate's cocoa alternative

London startup WNWN Food Labs is rolling out more cocoa-free chocolate to cater for consumers concerned about buying the real thing.

The company is offering three new bars that are free from dairy, palm oil and caffeine, and uses barley and carob to replicate chocolate's flavor. Each 48-gram bar costs £5 ($6.07), making them more expensive than mass-produced ones.

WNWN — pronounced "win, win" — is also working with Martin Braun-Gruppe, a German producer of bakery and confectionery with customers in more than 70 countries.

It's still early days, but WNWN's quest for guilt-free chocolate highlights shoppers' anxieties over where their food comes from and how it was made. Environmental and human rights controversies have plagued the chocolate industry for years. Cocoa has been a major driver of deforestation in West Africa, where poorly paid farmers often use children as workers.

New regulations will seek to put an end to that. The European Union is banning imports of cocoa and other commodities that are grown on deforested land, and next in line are measures to tackle issues like child labor.

As well as thinking about the sustainability of chocolate, consumers are also facing the prospect of higher costs.

Cocoa prices jumped to the highest in 44 years this week amid forecasts for poor crops in top growers Ivory Coast and Ghana. The countries produce about two-thirds of all supplies and a strong El Niño weather pattern threatens to bring dryness to West Africa, further hurting crops. Demand is also improving, with bean processing in Europe turning out better than expected.

The cocoa-price rally threatens to make cookies, candy and other treats even more expensive. Oreo maker Mondelez International cited cocoa as one of a number of commodities with rising prices in the first half of the year — and other chocolate manufacturers this year warned of possible further price hikes.

Price pressures aren't just coming from cocoa. Sugar has soared more than a third this year amid poor crops in India and Thailand. Bottlenecks plaguing ports and delaying shipments from agricultural powerhouse Brazil will last until at least 2025, keeping sugar prices high, according to the trading unit of China's largest food company.

—Agnieszka de Sousa in London

Growing hunger | More Americans faced food insecurity in 2022 than in the previous year, marking the first annual increase of struggling households in more than a decade. About 17 million households, or 13% of the total, experienced difficulty at some time during the year in providing enough food for all family members due to a lack of resources, the US Department of Agriculture said. The prevalence of food insecurity was significantly higher than the 13.5 million households, or 10% of the total, recorded in 2021, the agency said. (Read full story here).

Brazil is in talks with international investors to get $2 billion in funding before the end of the year as the agriculture powerhouse works to recover degraded pastureland to boost crop acreage.
More than a quarter of Canadians say profiteering by grocery chains is the top cause of high food costs, underscoring the political logic behind Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's public demands that stores stabilize prices.
Chinese grain companies participated in a formal contract-signing ceremony for the purchase of US farm goods for the first time since the Trump-era trade dispute.
President Joe Biden will ask lawmakers for more than a billion dollars in additional humanitarian aid, amid growing worries over the impact of the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East on global food availability.
Shipments of US soybean meal to other countries are expected to climb to a record high next year as more of America's top oilseed crop is crushed for vegetable oil sought after to make green diesel.

The sixth annual Bloomberg New Economy Forum returns to Singapore Nov. 8-10 as the world's most influential leaders gather to address the critical issues facing the global economy. This year's theme — "Embracing Instability" — focuses on opportunities to better understand underlying economic issues such as persistent inflation, geopolitical tension, the rise of artificial intelligence and the precarious state of the world's climate. Request an invitation here.

Colombia's constitutional court ruled Wednesday that the targeted health benefits of its new tax on sugary drinks and ultra-processed foods outweigh any impact on the free market, Bloomberg Law reports.
Beyond water, beverage makers' ingredients — sugar, corn, grapes and barley — are increasingly exposed to significant climate risk, leaving companies like Asahi, LVMH and Carlsberg eyeing more costs to produce drinks, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
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