Historella

World War II caused a shortage of cocoa in Europe.  Pietro Ferrero invented Nutella in the 1940s to spread onto slices of bread to eat for breakfast.  He decided to use hazelnuts as opposed to cocoa, which allowed for an increase in profit.  Readily available in Europe, hazelnut became the primary ingredient in the spread.  His genius invention would later become a popular commodity and an alternative to peanut butter in the global north (History of Nutella).

Hazelnuts have been found in northern parts of Europe as early as 5600 BC.  According to Kubiak-Martens, the civilizations at Tybrind Vig in Denmark utilized hazelnuts in their diets.  Both waterlogged and charred hazelnut shells were found in the Tybrind Vig assemblage.  Early settlements near Denmark reveal that hazelnuts were roasted in order to access the high fat and protein content.  If the hazelnuts showed evidence of charring, the “nuts inside were also charred and worthless as a food source”, which leads scientists, historians, and archaeologists to believe that hazelnuts could have been used as a source of fuel due to its flammability (Kubiak-Martens).

In Europe, World War II rationing triggered a shortage of cocoa.  Ferrero chose to use hazelnuts in order to limit the use of chocolate.  Italians in the Piedmont region of northwest Italy cultivated hazelnuts, which facilitated the production of Nutella (History of Nutella).  Second only to Turkey, Italy has consistently produced hazelnuts, cultivating between 120,000 to 85,000 metric tons per year.  On the flip side, Turkey produced 660,000 metric tons of the commodity (FAOSTAT).  This caused Ferrero to import more hazelnut from Turkey, because it was cheaper to get it from there.  

A similar situation occurred in the eighteenth century between Britain and India.  According to Marks, British textile manufacturers preferred to keep wages low because otherwise, they would not be able to compete with other manufacturers.  He pointed out that India had a competitive advantage against the United Kingdom in producing textiles, where the colony prospered in the world market (Marks).  This illustrated that since India could produce more textiles at a cheaper rate, companies preferred to purchase from India instead of from their own country, Britain.  In the case of Nutella, while Italy produced tons of hazelnut for Nutella, Turkey produced 6.5 times as much hazelnut, causing the latter country to be integrated into the world market of Nutella production.