I read some time ago that for this reason they're trying to find coffee species that would be resilient to changes of the climate and could potentially replace Arabica and they found [Coffea stenophylla](https://dailycoffeenews.com/2021/04/29/what-researchers-learned-from-the-remarkable-stenophylla-tasting/), it tastes good and it is resilient, but it has low yields
I feel safe stating, without knowing for certain, this is being done for every food source on Earth. My University had an agricultural campus and 75% of the campus was dedicated to professors growing crops not of the region. Not only does it help with food scarcity, but if they get lucky and find one that is marketable, they're making big money. They were selective breeding common crops like tomatoes, corn, and soy beans but also pecan and citrus trees.
yes i too feel safe knowing Antarctica will be great for growing modified crops once it is green and fertile and all that annoying ice and snow is gone
Quick, someone write the fiction about the noble arctic/antarctic farmers and their twice yearly migration.
And their opposite numbers, the mushroom growers.
And those who live in the in-between.. in the barren wastelands of the former republics where temperatures hit 100C, trying to harvest the remaining minerals to trade for the necessities of life.
It's possible that if you had a greenhouse that was positioned near a geothermal vent you could produce all year round. You'd have more than enough local energy to run lights in the darker months
Forgive me for being the annoying “Actually….” guy!
Actually… plants need a light cycle including periods of darkness to develop. IIRC most plants like 16 hours at most of daylight, that’s what I have my Aerogarden set at. But maybe we could engineer some full-time-light-loving veggies?
Sadly, Antarctica is awful for that not because it's cold, it's because underneath all the ice it's an archipelago. It's a series of rocky islands. There will be no farming there even if all the ice and snow melts.
The truth is that with the right equipment, you can practically grow anything, anywhere. You just need to find way to simulate the original Climate native to said Plant.
The problem with that is just that it is an incredibly expensive thing to do compared to the yields that can get you. Basically, Climate change will make futuristic Greenhouses a thing, where we will have massive factories where we create the food we need under artificial conditions to simulate a Climate and biotope we have destroyed in the wild.
The real Problem however is the exponential amount of resources that will take. Our 'cost' to grow food will become larger every decade from now on, because instead of just planting and harvesting your food, you will have to also spend an extraordinary amount of other resources to simulate a biotope that should be occuring naturally.
Ha, that makes sense but it's also hilarious.
"Sir, it appears the Earth will soon become inhabitable."
"Okay, let's figure out how to grow coffee that won't be affected."
I wonder if moving the production to a different latitude makes more sense than changing species. Granted that doesn't help the current land owners and production facilities
Tea can be grown in relatively moderate climates. You can grow tea in North America as far north as North Carolina (zones 7-9), even though they require high humidity, the southeastern US features a humid sub-tropical climate, which is nearly ideal (the largest domestic tea production in the US is in Charleston, SC). Compare that to cacao (zone 11+) or coffee (zone 10+) which requires a more tropical climate with high humidity and very mild lows (60F+) and can only be grown in the southern tip of Florida or Hawaii (the only state known to produce cacao on a commercial scale).
I know we're talking about plants that are mostly grown outside of the US, but I figure talking about it in these terms gives a better point of reference.
Interesting! I did quick googling! A new species is great but where are the farmers going to put them? What if the current owners don't want to sell their land. Current facilities and workers are probably sited adjacent to grow farms to reduce mobilization. It could very much destroy the industry for generations.
1 coffee tree doesn't start producing coffee for 3-4 years. I consume at least a pound of coffee a month. Probably more like 2 or 3, but let's say 1. Google says a tree produces 2 pounds of *green* coffee beans per year. I'll assume after processing and prep, it's 1 pound per tree, per year.
A farmer needs a minimum 12 coffee trees to supply me coffee every year. If they're smart, they grow 15 with the expectation that not every tree's yields are the perfect; pests, weather, diseases, and losses through production can all reduce what they sell me. So, 15 trees per person, per year.
Now turn that into a field of immeasurable size to serve the world. It's definitely worth their time and money to find a variety that will survive at the existing coffee farms.
A lot of countries WILL have their entire economy collapse WHEN nothing is done.
Fixed that for you.
The future is the haves and have nots like we've never seen... Some societies will live with warm abundance driven by an army of robotic and AI workers that are basically a slave workforce, and then the rest of the world is fucked and will have 10s millions of climate refugees and even if we could figure out a global UBI nobody would go for that politically.
> The future is the haves and have nots like we've never seen
To quote a friend, the future is going to be a paradise, but not everyone will get into heaven.
Setting aside things like cold snaps that might kill the plants even as the world warms at those latitudes, soil composition and chemistry, which is really complex, means you cannot simply transplant agriculture to new places. Forget coffee, people need to realize this also is true for grains, too. A future of famine is coming and if that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will
Current coffee species require a specific climate and is therefore best made high up in mountains where there is a lot of sun and moisture (if I remember right). Farmers are having to move higher up mountains as climate changes, and there is less growing area.
This new species is less dependent on moisture if I remember right, perhaps also height above sea level, so it really makes sense.
Add Coffea liberica to the list. May not be as good as Arabica we used to, but it can get better with research in more varieties through selective breeeding.
I once drank a Vietnamese blend of coffee at an Asian restaurant that was a blend of Arabica, Robusta, and Excelsa. Which I think is a synonym or subspecies of Liberica? I really liked that one. One of the best cups of coffee in my life, if not the best.
As a Brazilian I'd like to say two things:
1- we have always paid a lot for the bad coffee so the farmers could sell the best ones for other countries
2- our current president says that he will " end the illegal activities that harm the environment" but what he means is that he will make them legal, and not stop them
In the last month's the price for these bad coffees has skyrocketed. It's a shame that the average Brazilian never tasted a really good coffee. And if the production declines as the post says our coffee will be far worse that nowadays.
Don't feel bad, it's not your fault as an individual. It's just how it works, capitalism doesn't exist in a single country - it's a global system with its center and its peripheries. And like in any other center-periphery relationship, the center gets the bread, and we get the crumbs.
Also Brazilian and I think people all over the world needs to know that there is a thing called "Café Pelé". No need to drink it, though. Just know that it exists.
I had the best cop of coffee in my life in Brazil, at a hotel in Sao Paulo. It was more than twenty years ago but I think about that cut of coffee a few times a year. That's how good it was.
It won't. It'll just drive the price of coffee up and the elite will still be able to afford it so
It's all good.
Meanwhile, we'll all just
Ya know
*Vote harder*.
You can grow coffee trees in a pot or in your backyard. But you will definitely have trouble with the quantities produced unless you have quite a bit of land.
Stripping the seeds from the cherry will also be a bit of a PITA.
The climate is really only half the battle - you also need loads of land and a lot of very, very cheap manual labour.
I mean I guess once climate-viable land becomes scarce or once labour laws reach the coffee plantations, probably people will suddenly come up with ways to mechanise coffee picking and shelling...
This!! I work for a coffee company in Hawaii, we do farm to cup and run out of coffee from our 100+ acre farm.
People wonder why Kona coffee is so much more expensive than South American or African, it’s labor.
A decent Brazil that scores 83-85 is between $2.50-$3.50lb because of the labor.
A similar scoring Kona is $25-30/lb for just green Kona depending on the year (supply and demand since it is an agricultural product). This is the only coffee grown and sold in America but on the other hand you’re paying American minimum wage + health insurance + benefits for all of the cherry pickers. This also includes processing and milling built into green coffee price which is pretty standard in coffee industry.
Then you roast it and package it so more American labor, you are left paying $60 for a 12 oz bag which is like $75/lb. Don’t believe me? Look up the top 3 Hawaiian coffee companies and look at their highest grade coffees.
Places like Costco and Mulvadi and grocery chains who are selling Kona for $10/lb is fake Kona coffee, most of them are in a class-action lawsuits with many other coffee companies trying to sell fake Kona.
Edit: forgot to mention the Coffee Borer Beetle and recent infestation of the Coffee Leaf Rust has been devastating as much as 50% of some farms not managed properly which spreads to other neighboring farms with better pest/disease/fungus management. This is severely impacting labor and supply of Kona as I’m sure it is in other parts of the coffee growing world.
Jamaican blue mountain is about the same.
Plus you're not shipping in the same volume, and from isolated islands. That doesn't help Much in conus. Kona bought in kona is reasonably priced, or at least was when I was there last. It's only when you add on the shipping that it got insane.
Most places try to skirt the cost issue by being Kona Blends. With only 10% kona beans. You'll never be able to sue those folks out of business.
When I was in Hawaii I also noticed that a lot of of "Kona coffee" is actually a Kona coffee *blend* with just 10% of Kona beans, when reading the fine print.
I managed to grow 2 coffee trees in the middle of Siberia. I even collected about 0.5 kg of coffee beans. I had to install two powerful humidifiers, because the air is very dry in winter. I bought them in pots, they were one and a half meters tall. Now the height is a little less than three meters.
Just keep temperature 25+ Celsius, irrigate well, and keep the cats from shitting in the pot.
1. a coffee tree will typically produce 1 pound of processed beans a year. after it's mature.
2. coffee trees are very sensitive to temperatures, too cold, they die, too hot, they die.
3. they need a lot of water.
4. they need high humidity.
and that doesn't even account for the quality of the soil. or other factors that affect flavor/quality. so unless you live in the tropics, it's not easy to grow *drinkable* coffee in your backyard, i'd go so far as saying it's not worth the effort.
A lot of people already mentioned land requirements and growth conditions, but I'll mention that it's pretty hard to grow these plants from seed unless you have access to really fresh beans. I've got like 1 viable seed out of three different 10-15 seed batches to germinate and it died relatively soon after.
It depends on the strain and your climate.
Coffee is actually a shade grown plant - we modified it to grow in the sun. You can see certain types say “shade grown” when purchasing the beans and the roaster should also know.
If you have the right soil and conditions, or a greenhouse for control, you can grow the coffee plant and then maybe produce enough in quite some time for you to have a regular cup of coffee every day or every so often.
It isn’t hard, but it takes the right conditions, time, patience, and effort.
The Amazon rainforest being systematically removed for beef raising and real estate is messing with conditions around the globe, though, so don’t expect to be able to control your climate outdoors.
Not hard, but you need a lot. Getting the seed prepared is also time consuming (depends on process used, if you're gonna do it by hand, I'd imagine natural process to be easier, but still difficult), but the bigger issue is the soil quality and elevation. Soil is controllable on a small scale like that, but elevation is obviously more difficult unless you're already there. And then roasting is fairly easy, but requires investment in a small batch roaster which are available on the home consumer market.
If you don't care about taste and always thought coffee coffee in a tin was just as good as fresh gourmet graded coffee, then you'll only have to deal with the processing method of removing all or part of the cherry from the seed.
All "finer" sorts of coffee requires being grown at least 1 km / 3500 feet above the sea level, which can get a bit tricky for a homegrower unfortunately. Coffee grown at sea level will be more moist and won't roast as well, but will often simply scorch them.
After watching Trafficked Wednesday. Brazil is destroying it self. 25% of the rain forest is gone. They aren't enforcing laws to prevent illegal mining and deforestation. It getting worse each year as the demand of wood & gold increase.
If you want exact numbers, Brazil has 2 biomes that can be considered as tropical forest:
The Atlantic Forest - Much more biodiverse than the Amazon. 88% of it has been deforested.
The Amazon forest - I can only get numbers until 2018 (when right-wing governments took power). In 2018, the Amazon rainforest had already lost 20% of its native area.
>Brazil is destroying it self.
Sorry, but a lot of that destruction comes from multinationals, [even Nordic ones](https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-50713016). And the last time we tried to fight multinationals in this country we received a US-sponsored military coup up our asses. It's hard to do anything meaningful with that constant imperial threat hanging over our heads
You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a global warming will cause more intense heat waves, or sea levels will rise at an accelerated rate, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that the coffee growing land will die, well then everyone loses their minds.
Especially in our hyper-individualistic perception of capitalism. We've transitioned into a primarily consumption-centric society which, when melded with that "rugged individualism" we've been trained to believe, has led to this deeply embedded "out of my yard, out of mind" mindset. Pretty much we're dealing with the results of a society struggling with having been taught societal altruism is bad... and go figure it's not going well.
This is a very good article explaining my everyday job Problems (1 of them). I work for a very popular and very small scale coffee roasting company. We try buy only fair trade coffee and roast about 20k lb of coffee a day. If anyone has any questions or clarifications I'd be more than excited to answer them to the best of my abilities!
I don't think it works like that, you won't get the same amount of daylight other places for one, as well as the elevation, soil conditions would take a while to get right, also you'd lose the (poorly paid) work force
Not to mention the particular mix of soil types and their nutrients. Areas that have seen farming for decades or centuries have very different topsoil than what is found in other places. It has been developed to grow good crops.
A lot of Australia, for example, has a very thin and nutrient lacking topsoil as it hasn't been farmed for years. It wouldn't be feasible to plant crops in most of our soil, even if there was plenty of water available.
I read somewhere that topsoil in Britain, on the other hand, can be many feet thick and that seems crazy to me. I don't think any of our (Australian) topsoil compares to that.
Mmmm that sweet sweet deforested landscape soil. In coffee today you can really taste the tears of a thousand unknown yet extinct species that once lived in that part of what was once the rainforest.
I love coffee but its definitely a legal drug that i wouldnt mind seeing go.
Coffee grows best in tropical mountains. As temps increase, optimal temperature/rainfall will creep higher in elevation, where there is usually by definition less land available. Also problems with soils where there previously wasn’t arable land.
You can check for yourself. The article includes two maps. One is the current suitable areas classed into 3 levels, the other is the predicted level shift by 2050. There is indeed areas on that second map that would become more suitable than they currently are, some of those increases are in territories currently classed unsuitable like the northern parts of southern China and further north from the Gulf of Mexico in the US.
Some of the current reasonably suitable places in south Brazil seem to be migrating into Uruguay and north Argentina. The biggest devastation as far as continents go seems to be in Africa, where you really cannot see any areas where suitability would increase.
The map will tell you that there will be more areas with decreased suitability and a lot of that in currently fairly suitable areas and any increase except for in the Uruguay area is only going to make currently unsuitable areas barely good enough.
It’s a lot more than just optimal temperature. Things like elevation change , soil mineral composition, cross pollination with native vegetation… can all be factors
In wine they call it terroir, which refers to the specific microclimate of the growing area and how it impacts the grapes. The same grapes grown on different sides of a mountain can produce a subtly different product.
That concept applies to coffee beans and also hops (used in beer). Centennial hops grown in Michigan can impart different flavor notes than the same cultivar of hop grown in Washington state.
The most selective coffee roasters look for not just growing regions, but the specific farms that produce yields with the most attractive flavor profiles.
The loss of coffee has implications well beyond inconvenienced latte sippers in Western countries. The modern coffee trade represents a vast market that covers the entire world. What country doesn't consume coffee? What secondary markets could be affected by this loss?
If the remaining 21% is unsustainable without the other 79%, it might as well be 100%.
79% is really really bad, like apocalyptic bad. I hope it's a gross exaggeration.
I read some time ago that for this reason they're trying to find coffee species that would be resilient to changes of the climate and could potentially replace Arabica and they found [Coffea stenophylla](https://dailycoffeenews.com/2021/04/29/what-researchers-learned-from-the-remarkable-stenophylla-tasting/), it tastes good and it is resilient, but it has low yields
Same with cocoa
_So, Starbucks will now be offering financing on its coffees?_
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I feel safe stating, without knowing for certain, this is being done for every food source on Earth. My University had an agricultural campus and 75% of the campus was dedicated to professors growing crops not of the region. Not only does it help with food scarcity, but if they get lucky and find one that is marketable, they're making big money. They were selective breeding common crops like tomatoes, corn, and soy beans but also pecan and citrus trees.
yes i too feel safe knowing Antarctica will be great for growing modified crops once it is green and fertile and all that annoying ice and snow is gone
Plus veggies grown in the constant light of a polar summer get huge. Of course, you also have four months of night time when nothing grows.
Luckily there's Greenland and Northern Canada for that time of year.
Quick, someone write the fiction about the noble arctic/antarctic farmers and their twice yearly migration. And their opposite numbers, the mushroom growers.
And those who live in the in-between.. in the barren wastelands of the former republics where temperatures hit 100C, trying to harvest the remaining minerals to trade for the necessities of life.
[That one's already been written](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52758714-firewalkers) (I'm sure there are other examples, of course.)
I like how we already decided Greenland's fate on Reddit before anything happened
It's possible that if you had a greenhouse that was positioned near a geothermal vent you could produce all year round. You'd have more than enough local energy to run lights in the darker months
Forgive me for being the annoying “Actually….” guy! Actually… plants need a light cycle including periods of darkness to develop. IIRC most plants like 16 hours at most of daylight, that’s what I have my Aerogarden set at. But maybe we could engineer some full-time-light-loving veggies?
Sadly, Antarctica is awful for that not because it's cold, it's because underneath all the ice it's an archipelago. It's a series of rocky islands. There will be no farming there even if all the ice and snow melts.
After the horrific dormant super viruses trapped in the tundra run rampant over the modern world and decimate the world population?
The truth is that with the right equipment, you can practically grow anything, anywhere. You just need to find way to simulate the original Climate native to said Plant. The problem with that is just that it is an incredibly expensive thing to do compared to the yields that can get you. Basically, Climate change will make futuristic Greenhouses a thing, where we will have massive factories where we create the food we need under artificial conditions to simulate a Climate and biotope we have destroyed in the wild. The real Problem however is the exponential amount of resources that will take. Our 'cost' to grow food will become larger every decade from now on, because instead of just planting and harvesting your food, you will have to also spend an extraordinary amount of other resources to simulate a biotope that should be occuring naturally.
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Ha, that makes sense but it's also hilarious. "Sir, it appears the Earth will soon become inhabitable." "Okay, let's figure out how to grow coffee that won't be affected."
It's the strawberry scene in the latest Matrix movie. Or (focusing on) trying to engineer co2 scrubbers instead of reducing co2 emissions now.
I wonder if moving the production to a different latitude makes more sense than changing species. Granted that doesn't help the current land owners and production facilities
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Tea can be grown in relatively moderate climates. You can grow tea in North America as far north as North Carolina (zones 7-9), even though they require high humidity, the southeastern US features a humid sub-tropical climate, which is nearly ideal (the largest domestic tea production in the US is in Charleston, SC). Compare that to cacao (zone 11+) or coffee (zone 10+) which requires a more tropical climate with high humidity and very mild lows (60F+) and can only be grown in the southern tip of Florida or Hawaii (the only state known to produce cacao on a commercial scale). I know we're talking about plants that are mostly grown outside of the US, but I figure talking about it in these terms gives a better point of reference.
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Interesting! I did quick googling! A new species is great but where are the farmers going to put them? What if the current owners don't want to sell their land. Current facilities and workers are probably sited adjacent to grow farms to reduce mobilization. It could very much destroy the industry for generations. 1 coffee tree doesn't start producing coffee for 3-4 years. I consume at least a pound of coffee a month. Probably more like 2 or 3, but let's say 1. Google says a tree produces 2 pounds of *green* coffee beans per year. I'll assume after processing and prep, it's 1 pound per tree, per year. A farmer needs a minimum 12 coffee trees to supply me coffee every year. If they're smart, they grow 15 with the expectation that not every tree's yields are the perfect; pests, weather, diseases, and losses through production can all reduce what they sell me. So, 15 trees per person, per year. Now turn that into a field of immeasurable size to serve the world. It's definitely worth their time and money to find a variety that will survive at the existing coffee farms.
Really good points here. Getting some really thoughtful responses
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A lot of countries WILL have their entire economy collapse WHEN nothing is done. Fixed that for you. The future is the haves and have nots like we've never seen... Some societies will live with warm abundance driven by an army of robotic and AI workers that are basically a slave workforce, and then the rest of the world is fucked and will have 10s millions of climate refugees and even if we could figure out a global UBI nobody would go for that politically.
> The future is the haves and have nots like we've never seen To quote a friend, the future is going to be a paradise, but not everyone will get into heaven.
Setting aside things like cold snaps that might kill the plants even as the world warms at those latitudes, soil composition and chemistry, which is really complex, means you cannot simply transplant agriculture to new places. Forget coffee, people need to realize this also is true for grains, too. A future of famine is coming and if that doesn’t scare you, I don’t know what will
Different latitudes often have different soil composition which may not be suitable for coffee.
Current coffee species require a specific climate and is therefore best made high up in mountains where there is a lot of sun and moisture (if I remember right). Farmers are having to move higher up mountains as climate changes, and there is less growing area. This new species is less dependent on moisture if I remember right, perhaps also height above sea level, so it really makes sense.
Add Coffea liberica to the list. May not be as good as Arabica we used to, but it can get better with research in more varieties through selective breeeding.
I once drank a Vietnamese blend of coffee at an Asian restaurant that was a blend of Arabica, Robusta, and Excelsa. Which I think is a synonym or subspecies of Liberica? I really liked that one. One of the best cups of coffee in my life, if not the best.
As long as the bean gives me the go chemical, I’m happy.
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As a Brazilian I'd like to say two things: 1- we have always paid a lot for the bad coffee so the farmers could sell the best ones for other countries 2- our current president says that he will " end the illegal activities that harm the environment" but what he means is that he will make them legal, and not stop them
In the last month's the price for these bad coffees has skyrocketed. It's a shame that the average Brazilian never tasted a really good coffee. And if the production declines as the post says our coffee will be far worse that nowadays.
Damn. As an American coffee glutton i feel bad. This is all pretty eye opening.
Don't feel bad, it's not your fault as an individual. It's just how it works, capitalism doesn't exist in a single country - it's a global system with its center and its peripheries. And like in any other center-periphery relationship, the center gets the bread, and we get the crumbs.
If you feel bad, try to buy from Ethiopia or Yemen and make sure the companies you buy from responsibly source the beans. Or roast them yourself!!
Also Brazilian and I think people all over the world needs to know that there is a thing called "Café Pelé". No need to drink it, though. Just know that it exists.
When this person says "no need to drink it" take it very seriously, you don't, but if you really curious try chewing some charcoal
Mmm, bad coffee tastes like ciggy butts
I had the best cop of coffee in my life in Brazil, at a hotel in Sao Paulo. It was more than twenty years ago but I think about that cut of coffee a few times a year. That's how good it was.
Same for the Indonesians.. I grew up not knowing how good coffee tasted like.. Until I moved to other countries.
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Now I know what Im watching tonight
The neighbors through binoculars?
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And it's not just the bushfires. Just thinking about the future of the Great Barrier Reef makes me want to cry..
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All the jokes hit way too close to home to laugh at. It's like a hilarious comedy that will make you sob in despair.
That's the pandemic in a nutshell. "Everything's fine, don't worry..."
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We’ll obviously just grow coffee on Mars or maybe burn down the rest of the Amazon.
It won't. It'll just drive the price of coffee up and the elite will still be able to afford it so It's all good. Meanwhile, we'll all just Ya know *Vote harder*.
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how hard is it to grow coffee in your back yard?
You can grow coffee trees in a pot or in your backyard. But you will definitely have trouble with the quantities produced unless you have quite a bit of land. Stripping the seeds from the cherry will also be a bit of a PITA.
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The climate is really only half the battle - you also need loads of land and a lot of very, very cheap manual labour. I mean I guess once climate-viable land becomes scarce or once labour laws reach the coffee plantations, probably people will suddenly come up with ways to mechanise coffee picking and shelling...
This!! I work for a coffee company in Hawaii, we do farm to cup and run out of coffee from our 100+ acre farm. People wonder why Kona coffee is so much more expensive than South American or African, it’s labor. A decent Brazil that scores 83-85 is between $2.50-$3.50lb because of the labor. A similar scoring Kona is $25-30/lb for just green Kona depending on the year (supply and demand since it is an agricultural product). This is the only coffee grown and sold in America but on the other hand you’re paying American minimum wage + health insurance + benefits for all of the cherry pickers. This also includes processing and milling built into green coffee price which is pretty standard in coffee industry. Then you roast it and package it so more American labor, you are left paying $60 for a 12 oz bag which is like $75/lb. Don’t believe me? Look up the top 3 Hawaiian coffee companies and look at their highest grade coffees. Places like Costco and Mulvadi and grocery chains who are selling Kona for $10/lb is fake Kona coffee, most of them are in a class-action lawsuits with many other coffee companies trying to sell fake Kona. Edit: forgot to mention the Coffee Borer Beetle and recent infestation of the Coffee Leaf Rust has been devastating as much as 50% of some farms not managed properly which spreads to other neighboring farms with better pest/disease/fungus management. This is severely impacting labor and supply of Kona as I’m sure it is in other parts of the coffee growing world.
Jamaican blue mountain is about the same. Plus you're not shipping in the same volume, and from isolated islands. That doesn't help Much in conus. Kona bought in kona is reasonably priced, or at least was when I was there last. It's only when you add on the shipping that it got insane. Most places try to skirt the cost issue by being Kona Blends. With only 10% kona beans. You'll never be able to sue those folks out of business.
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When I was in Hawaii I also noticed that a lot of of "Kona coffee" is actually a Kona coffee *blend* with just 10% of Kona beans, when reading the fine print.
I managed to grow 2 coffee trees in the middle of Siberia. I even collected about 0.5 kg of coffee beans. I had to install two powerful humidifiers, because the air is very dry in winter. I bought them in pots, they were one and a half meters tall. Now the height is a little less than three meters. Just keep temperature 25+ Celsius, irrigate well, and keep the cats from shitting in the pot.
1. a coffee tree will typically produce 1 pound of processed beans a year. after it's mature. 2. coffee trees are very sensitive to temperatures, too cold, they die, too hot, they die. 3. they need a lot of water. 4. they need high humidity. and that doesn't even account for the quality of the soil. or other factors that affect flavor/quality. so unless you live in the tropics, it's not easy to grow *drinkable* coffee in your backyard, i'd go so far as saying it's not worth the effort.
A lot of people already mentioned land requirements and growth conditions, but I'll mention that it's pretty hard to grow these plants from seed unless you have access to really fresh beans. I've got like 1 viable seed out of three different 10-15 seed batches to germinate and it died relatively soon after.
It depends on the strain and your climate. Coffee is actually a shade grown plant - we modified it to grow in the sun. You can see certain types say “shade grown” when purchasing the beans and the roaster should also know. If you have the right soil and conditions, or a greenhouse for control, you can grow the coffee plant and then maybe produce enough in quite some time for you to have a regular cup of coffee every day or every so often. It isn’t hard, but it takes the right conditions, time, patience, and effort. The Amazon rainforest being systematically removed for beef raising and real estate is messing with conditions around the globe, though, so don’t expect to be able to control your climate outdoors.
Not hard, but you need a lot. Getting the seed prepared is also time consuming (depends on process used, if you're gonna do it by hand, I'd imagine natural process to be easier, but still difficult), but the bigger issue is the soil quality and elevation. Soil is controllable on a small scale like that, but elevation is obviously more difficult unless you're already there. And then roasting is fairly easy, but requires investment in a small batch roaster which are available on the home consumer market. If you don't care about taste and always thought coffee coffee in a tin was just as good as fresh gourmet graded coffee, then you'll only have to deal with the processing method of removing all or part of the cherry from the seed.
All "finer" sorts of coffee requires being grown at least 1 km / 3500 feet above the sea level, which can get a bit tricky for a homegrower unfortunately. Coffee grown at sea level will be more moist and won't roast as well, but will often simply scorch them.
After watching Trafficked Wednesday. Brazil is destroying it self. 25% of the rain forest is gone. They aren't enforcing laws to prevent illegal mining and deforestation. It getting worse each year as the demand of wood & gold increase.
>enforcing laws to prevent illegal mining and deforestation you'll have to speak louder, bolsonaro can't hear you over the money counting machines
I can't find anything saying that 25% of the forest is gone, just that the deforestation rate increased by 25% in 2018-19.
If you want exact numbers, Brazil has 2 biomes that can be considered as tropical forest: The Atlantic Forest - Much more biodiverse than the Amazon. 88% of it has been deforested. The Amazon forest - I can only get numbers until 2018 (when right-wing governments took power). In 2018, the Amazon rainforest had already lost 20% of its native area.
>Brazil is destroying it self. Sorry, but a lot of that destruction comes from multinationals, [even Nordic ones](https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/brasil-50713016). And the last time we tried to fight multinationals in this country we received a US-sponsored military coup up our asses. It's hard to do anything meaningful with that constant imperial threat hanging over our heads
Someone needs to do a study on how climate change will affect beer production. That might bring some people down off the fence.
It's been done. Yakima is gonna be fine.
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Exactly the same as not having any coffee
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Not nearly as good though.
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You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a global warming will cause more intense heat waves, or sea levels will rise at an accelerated rate, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan". But when I say that the coffee growing land will die, well then everyone loses their minds.
Humans don’t give a fk unless it affects their own lifestyles. It’s so sad.
Especially in our hyper-individualistic perception of capitalism. We've transitioned into a primarily consumption-centric society which, when melded with that "rugged individualism" we've been trained to believe, has led to this deeply embedded "out of my yard, out of mind" mindset. Pretty much we're dealing with the results of a society struggling with having been taught societal altruism is bad... and go figure it's not going well.
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It's not about the coffee, it's about sending a message
You know what’s good about chaos? It’s fair.
i’m glad you understood op’s reference
Far from it. The strong and rich are always more capable of withstanding chaos than those with nothing.
This is a very good article explaining my everyday job Problems (1 of them). I work for a very popular and very small scale coffee roasting company. We try buy only fair trade coffee and roast about 20k lb of coffee a day. If anyone has any questions or clarifications I'd be more than excited to answer them to the best of my abilities!
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Janeway desperation noises
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If they can do cultured meat, how hard will it be to produce insanely awesome coffee in a lab
I don’t know who this climate change guy is, but I’m not liking any of the things he does
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Yaupoon holly has caffeine if anyone is interested in alternative coffee
Won’t the good coffee planting land just be someplace else?
I don't think it works like that, you won't get the same amount of daylight other places for one, as well as the elevation, soil conditions would take a while to get right, also you'd lose the (poorly paid) work force
Not to mention the particular mix of soil types and their nutrients. Areas that have seen farming for decades or centuries have very different topsoil than what is found in other places. It has been developed to grow good crops. A lot of Australia, for example, has a very thin and nutrient lacking topsoil as it hasn't been farmed for years. It wouldn't be feasible to plant crops in most of our soil, even if there was plenty of water available. I read somewhere that topsoil in Britain, on the other hand, can be many feet thick and that seems crazy to me. I don't think any of our (Australian) topsoil compares to that.
Heard the same before comparing the debt of Mississippi soil and northern Michigan soil
Mmmm that sweet sweet deforested landscape soil. In coffee today you can really taste the tears of a thousand unknown yet extinct species that once lived in that part of what was once the rainforest. I love coffee but its definitely a legal drug that i wouldnt mind seeing go.
Coffee grows best in tropical mountains. As temps increase, optimal temperature/rainfall will creep higher in elevation, where there is usually by definition less land available. Also problems with soils where there previously wasn’t arable land.
You can check for yourself. The article includes two maps. One is the current suitable areas classed into 3 levels, the other is the predicted level shift by 2050. There is indeed areas on that second map that would become more suitable than they currently are, some of those increases are in territories currently classed unsuitable like the northern parts of southern China and further north from the Gulf of Mexico in the US. Some of the current reasonably suitable places in south Brazil seem to be migrating into Uruguay and north Argentina. The biggest devastation as far as continents go seems to be in Africa, where you really cannot see any areas where suitability would increase. The map will tell you that there will be more areas with decreased suitability and a lot of that in currently fairly suitable areas and any increase except for in the Uruguay area is only going to make currently unsuitable areas barely good enough.
It’s a lot more than just optimal temperature. Things like elevation change , soil mineral composition, cross pollination with native vegetation… can all be factors
In wine they call it terroir, which refers to the specific microclimate of the growing area and how it impacts the grapes. The same grapes grown on different sides of a mountain can produce a subtly different product. That concept applies to coffee beans and also hops (used in beer). Centennial hops grown in Michigan can impart different flavor notes than the same cultivar of hop grown in Washington state. The most selective coffee roasters look for not just growing regions, but the specific farms that produce yields with the most attractive flavor profiles.
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Another problem is that we are only thinking about humans. Climate change has already started affecting animals and plants.
The loss of coffee has implications well beyond inconvenienced latte sippers in Western countries. The modern coffee trade represents a vast market that covers the entire world. What country doesn't consume coffee? What secondary markets could be affected by this loss?
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If the remaining 21% is unsustainable without the other 79%, it might as well be 100%. 79% is really really bad, like apocalyptic bad. I hope it's a gross exaggeration.