NEW YORK – Chocolate has landed on the endangered foods list, according to two of the world's largest chocolate makers. According to U.S.-based Mars Inc. and Swiss-based Barry Callebaut Group, chocolate-lovers worldwide are simply consuming more cocoa than farmers are able to produce.

Last year, the world consumed some 70,000 metric tons more cocoa than it produced. By 2020, the chocolate makers warn that number could increase to 1 million metric tons — a more than 14-fold increase. By 2030, the predicted shortfall could double to two million tons.

Most experts blame the dwindling supply of chocolate on dry weather in West Africa, where most of the world's cocoa is produced. Other factors for the decreased production include disease, increased demand to grow more-productive crops like corn, and the rising popularity of dark chocolate, which contains more cocoa by volume than milk chocolate. Another global factor driving the trend is increased chocolate consumption in China and other emerging markets.

Worldwide cocoa prices have already climbed by more than 60% since 2012, the first year that the world started eating more chocolate than could be produced.