Why Chocolate’s Future Needs a History Lesson From Rubber

The chocolate industry relies first and foremost on its core ingredient – cacao. But cacao farming is tangled in a web of problems: deforestation, poverty, child labor, and climate vulnerability. The industry is looking for a “silver bullet” to make it all go away, such as lab-grown cacao, or cocoa-free “chocolate” confections. It all sounds sweet, pun intended. Yet history warns us that innovation alone won’t fix a broken system.

The natural rubber industry tried doing the same. Innovation alone wasn’t enough then. And it won't be enough now.

The Rubber Industry's Hard Lesson

In the late 1800s, rubber was the miracle material the world couldn't get enough of. The first rubber boom was caused by the industrial age itself: telegraph cables, waterproof clothing, mechanical parts.

The real explosion came with the rise of automobiles. As cars took over roads in the early 20th century, the demand for tires, and rubber, skyrocketed. Today, more than 70% of all natural rubber still goes into tires. Most people have no idea.

That booming demand fueled brutal realities. In the Congo and Amazon, indigenous people were forced into labor to tap wild rubber vines. Millions were exploited, suffered, and died. Later, in Southeast Asia, colonial plantations cleared millions of hectares of rainforest to plant endless rows of rubber trees.

Then came synthetic rubber. Scientists had been developing alternatives before World War II, but wartime supply chain collapses forced mass adoption. With Japanese forces controlling Asian rubber plantations, synthetic rubber, made from fossil fuels, saved the war effort and rewrote the future of the industry.

And thus, all the sustainable and moral problems were solved. Right? Right? Actually... no.

Synthetic rubber introduced new problems: pollution from petrochemical plants, microplastic runoff from tires, and even a deeper dependence on fossil fuels. And what about the local workforce? As rubber lost value, most regions didn’t return their forests to nature. Instead, they switched to other cash crops, especially palm oil, fueling even greater deforestation and biodiversity collapse across Southeast Asia. In regions like Southeast Asia and Brazil, where economies had become heavily reliant on rubber agriculture, communities sank into an even deeper poverty than before.

The rubber industry changed the world and created enormous problems, but these problems could not just be erased by removing rubber farming. There is no real-life undo button.

The Risk Chocolate Faces Now

Fast-forward to chocolate today. Different crop, similar problems. And so, the race is on: lab-grown cacao, cocoa-free chocolates, fermentation-based alternatives.

There’s real potential here. These innovations could ease the pressure on tropical forests. They could shrink the exploitation that still haunts the chocolate industry.

But if we don't think bigger, we’re setting ourselves up to repeat rubber’s mistakes.

If we swap the ingredients but ignore the systems that created the crisis, we risk new kinds of harm:

• Collapsed rural economies.
• Mass farmer displacement.
• New monocultures growing new substitute crops in fragile ecosystems.

Without transparency, without fair transitions for cacao farmers and regenerative practices, without rebuilding trust along the supply chain, "sustainable chocolate" could end up being just another feel-good label, like those tires everyone drives on without a second thought.

A Personal View: How We Avoid History Repeating

As a chocolate innovator, I believe the path forward is clear and more urgent than ever.

We need radical transparency in chocolate’s supply chains. People deserve to know what their chocolate is made of and where it comes from.

And we need to engage consumers as part of the system, not treat them as passive buyers. When people understand the real story of chocolate: who grew it, who processed it, and what landscapes it touched, they make better, more conscious choices.

That connection is what chocolate desperately needs. It’s what rubber never got.

The Future We Should Choose

Chocolate needs more than new ingredients. It needs new relationships with farmers, with ecosystems, with consumers.

There’s no silver bullet for fixing the chocolate industry. We’ll need a mix of innovations—some upstream, some downstream—working across the entire value chain. From farm-level income models, to processing tech, to consumer engagement, every piece matters. Alt-chocolate is one of those innovations—and it absolutely has a role to play. But for investors and founders building the next generation of chocolate, the real opportunity lies in systems that connect, not just disrupt.

If we get it right, chocolate’s future can be bright, sweet, and truly sustainable. If we don't, we’ll look back and wonder why we ignored the lessons already written in history.

Liora Omer is a chocolate innovator, engineer, and founder of Home Chocolat, creator of CocoaBlox and The Chocolatier. She champions sustainability, creativity, and impact in the future of food.

Photos by Isuru Ranasinha on Unsplash. Left photo of cacao tree, right photo of rubber tree