Mars has said that an extra one million metric tons, or 1.1 million short tons, of cocoa will be needed to satisfy global demand by 2020 if no serious efforts are put in place to increase productivity in nations such as Ivory Coast, where farmers are already turning to alternative crops such as rubber or abandoning their small holdings altogether.

WSJ: Chocolate Makers Fight for Farmers' Loyalty

Increasingly, talented financial professionals are abandoning big investment banks for small firms.

ECONOMIST: Hedge funds

To grow, we wrote, the online auctioneer had to reach beyond small-time merchants--without abandoning them.

FORBES: Another Look

Its early success was to use small grants to keep young scientists from abandoning their research on the disease.

FORBES: Patient Power

The legislation focuses on small businesses, entrepreneurs and young people abandoning hometowns.

NPR: The New Homestead Act

The painful paradox for Ebay is that in order to maintain an upward trajectory, it must move beyond these small-time merchants--without abandoning them.

FORBES: D-Day for Ebay

Their manufacturers will learn the painful lesson that their tablets are too small and increase the size next year, thereby abandoning both customers and developers who jumped on the seven-inch bandwagon with an orphan product.

FORBES: Steve Jobs' Own Words From His Last Earnings Call

Followed by a small band of raggedy travellers, including a woman who is pregnant, the father frightens the group into abandoning camp.

ECONOMIST: New fiction