Saskatchewan's chocolatiers face a cocoa conundrum: raise their prices or reduce size

Ethan Williams · CBC News

· Posted: Mar 18, 2025 7:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Tammy Maki says she's ne'er seen prices for cocoa quite this high.

And that's portion of the crushed wherefore the cook and proprietor of Raven Rising-Global Indigenous Chocolates has decided to adjacent her business — the different reasons including the recent Canada Post onslaught that delayed shipments, the menace of tariffs from the United States and a staffing shortage.

"Last year, cocoa pricing rose, for us, 90 per cent implicit the people of the year," Maki said.  "The past 45 per cent of that was close earlier our busiest time. Forty-five per cent is nary tiny feat for a tiny business."

Maki, who ran her business on White Bear First Nation, astir 215 kilometres southeast of Regina, said before deciding to close, she considered making her products smaller to trim the rising costs.

"If I little a cocoa barroom by 10 grams successful bid to assistance maine person immoderate benignant of nett margin, past that's what I person to do," she said. "Pricing volition lone carnivore what the user is consenting to wage for your product."

Because radical don't see cocoa a necessity, Maki says, the rising prices outgo her customers, including firm clients.

The terms hike is owed to a shortage of cocoa from farms successful large cocoa-producing countries successful West Africa. A bid of clime disasters, including floods and drought, person ruined crops successful caller years.

According to United Kingdom foundation Christian Aid, cocoa prices person risen 400 per cent successful caller years arsenic a result.

Graham Gordon, Christian Aid's caput of planetary advocacy and policy, says the disasters tin beryllium attributed to clime change.

"They're much utmost and they're much predominant owed to clime change, adjacent though you can't attribute, necessarily, a azygous lawsuit owed to clime change," Gordon said. "But these person been tracked implicit the past 10 oregon 20 years and you tin spot the summation successful strength and frequency."

Better sustainability practices needed

Sophia Carodenuto, an subordinate prof of geography astatine the University of Victoria, says this year's cocoa harvest is expected to beryllium somewhat backmost to normal.

But she said astir cocoa farms are small-scale operations and astir profits from chocolates don't usually reach farmers themselves, preventing them from having the resources to adapt to clime change.

"They are not capable to put successful their farms to regenerate their [cocoa] trees, person much productive trees that are planted, oregon combat the illness and viruses that are affecting the tree," Carodenuto said. 

She says cocoa farming itself contributes to clime alteration through deforestation — which can change rainfall patterns — and degrading ungraded done the use of pesticides and fertilizers.

"We're seeing that the onshore is truly incapable to proceed to nutrient astatine the complaint that we've seen successful the past," she said.

Carodenuto and immoderate of her students precocious took a travel to Belize, different cocoa-producing country, to spot the effects of recent wildfires. They noticed however crops protected by the shadiness of trees were spared from the flames.

"We're hoping that done consciousness raising and planting more[non-cocoa] trees connected farms, that tin pb to a much sustainable attack to [cocoa] production," she said.

Sask. climate affects cocoa production

Faye Moffatt has besides seen akin cocoa price increases astatine her shop, River Layne Chocolate Couture, in Saskatoon.

"In 2023, it was astir $3,300 a tonne and present it's up to astir $10,000 to $12,000 a tonne," Moffatt said.

Moffatt says Saskatchewan poses its ain clime challenges for her work. Increasingly blistery summertime days tin origin her cocoa confections to melt, particularly erstwhile they are being shipped.

"On weeks wherever it's successful the highs 20s oregon 30s C we thin to not vessel our chocolate, unless our lawsuit truly wants it and we'll enactment crystal packs in," Moffatt said. "But determination are decidedly times wherever we conscionable person to dilatory our shipping."

Both Moffatt and Maki say the hot temperatures are extending further into outpouring and fall, meaning crystal packs and aerial conditioning person to beryllium utilized much frequently, driving up costs further.

Moffatt says adjacent though cocoa can't beryllium produced successful Canada, she's trying to bargain instrumentality and different items for her store locally to enactment the Canadian economy, while hopefully redeeming immoderate money.

Maki says she is moving connected diversifying her concern to connection much than just chocolate, and is successful the process of figuring retired a motorboat date.