Now it's probably not something you have ever thought about when you are taking a sip from your Vanilla Latte, but with huge corporations grinding through thousands of tons of coffee each day, can the ever-increasing demand be sustained for the consumer, me and you?
The logical answer to higher demand would be to grow more to keep up with the increasing coffee addicts. However this may not actually be possible. This is especially more concerning for the specialty coffee sector.
Coffee is notoriously tricky to produce. The plant is rather picky with its surroundings in order 'to create the cherry we later take the bean from. You may think its not an issue for us living now, but it is. The area in which coffee trees can be grown is shrinking. Rapidly.
Many factors influence the level of quality and development of flavour characteristics in the coffee bean; from the climate, altitude, type of soil and species and variety of coffee tree through to the harvesting and processing of the ripe beans. Ok, maybe I'm losing you a bit but its so important to understand the complexities that affect the final outcome.
So here is an overview of the different areas that contribute to the coffee trees' growth and flavour.
Climate and microclimate:
Hot regions, broadly around the Equator, are where coffee trees originated from although this doesn't mean the hotter the climate the better. If the area is too hot then the plants are weakened, resulting in reduced production and becoming more susceptible to pests and diseases. At the other extreme, coffee is not frost tolerant. If the temperature dips to low it results in total loss of crop.
Rainfall is also a very important element. Arabica beans require around 1500-2500mm of rain distribution over a period of nine months. This triggers the flowering of the plant (yes it is this precise!). Rain is then needed throughout the growing season as the cherries develop. As well as the rain there is a need for dry season. This is during the three months of the year when the cherries are harvested and dried.
Are you begining to see the difficulties that the farmers are faced with? Try finding an area which has plenty of rain fall, but not too much. Is a hot climate but not too hot and has a three month period of total dryness? Nothing springs to mind right. Oh and I haven't even mentioned the altitude dilemma yet!
Altitude:
Generally higher altitudes give coffee the superior flavour. Coffee trees thrive in tropical climates. However the vigorous growth creates greater quantity but the bounty will lack flavour. In cooler conditions the coffee tree grows slower which results in more prominent flavours. In mountainous regions, around 1200-2000m above sea level it remains cooler. The trees mature slowly and the beans are more dense which concentrate sugars, organic acids and other bits of goodness.
So I hope you can appreciate the complexities in this single part of the long road the coffee beans take before ending up in your coffee cup. Now back to my original question. Is it sustainable?
Climate change is coffee's biggest enemy. That's right I said it. Everyone buy a electric vehicle and stop breathing to reduce CO2. Ok maybe that is a exaggeration. But this is a real issue.
The Arabica bean as we know and love it has very narrow tolerances for temperature and rainfall. The rain needs to come at particular times of the year, during flowering and cherry development and not after the harvest period when the farmers are drying the crop. As I said earlier temperatures that increase above what the coffee tree can handle makes them susceptible to pests and disease.
A science team from the Royal Botanic Gardens researched into the affect of climate change and created a computer modelling analysis that projected a reduction in land suitable for wild Arabica coffee forests in Ethiopia of between 85% and 99.7% as soon as 2080! This is a substantial reduction in land where the farmers can grow. This is real life and it is happening now.
So next time you step into a specialty coffee shop and wonder why the price is slightly higher than your local cafe it's because the farmers are being treated fairer and rewarded greater for their increasingly difficult job.
Thank you for reading.