Disease Outbreak Threatens the Future of Good Coffee 259
Wired reports on a disease infecting coffee plants across Central America that could lead to shortages around the world. "Regional production fell by 15 percent last year, putting nearly 400,000 people out of work, and that’s just a taste of what’s to come. The next harvest season begins in October, and according to the International Coffee Organization, crop losses could hit 50 percent." The disease is called coffee rust, and it has been damaging crops to some degree since the 1800s. It's not known yet exactly why coffee rust has become such a problem now, but one of the leading suspects is climate change. "Since the mid-20th century, though, weather patterns in Central America and northern South America have shifted. Average temperatures are warmer across the region, with extremes of both heat and cold becoming more pronounced; so are extreme rainfall events." The fungus that causes coffee rust thrives on warm, humid air, and higher temperatures have allowed it to climb to higher altitudes than ever before. But another likely cause is the way in which coffee is planted and harvested these days: the plants evolved as shade-dwellers, but are now often placed in direct sunlight. They're also clustered closer together, which facilitates the spread of disease. "The integrity of this once-complicated ecosystem has been slowly breaking down, which is what happens when you try to grow coffee like corn."
No.... (Score:2)
This can't be happening!
Re:No.... (Score:5, Funny)
Yet another problem with java.
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And it isn't. Because quality coffee is grown in Africa, especially the Kenyan highlands. Whatever they do in middle America has little impact on quality coffee.
Re:No.... (Score:5, Informative)
Top Ten Green Coffee Producers - 2009 (millions of metric tons)
Brazil 2.44
Vietnam 1.18
Colombia 0.89
Indonesia 0.70
India 0.29
Ethiopia 0.27
Peru 0.26
Mexico 0.25
Guatemala 0.25
Honduras 0.21
-----------------
World Total 7.80
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Kenyan coffee is good, but to claim central american coffee is not quality is utter bullshit. I bet you've never actually been to a guatamalan coffee plantation, and that in a blind taste-test you could tell the difference between beans from the different regions.
In fact I bet you're one of those snobs who think civet-crap coffee is actually intrinsically better than coffee from carefully mechanically and then hand sorted high-quality coffee beans. I'd love you to do a comparative taste-test of coffee made from beans harvested from civet-shit and coffee made from beans I shit out.
Go be snobbish somewhere else. Better yet, go back to the trailer park Folgers dark roast you're running away from.
Kenyan coffee can be very good. I just brewed up the second cup of the morning - a fair/free trade local brand that the company owners first sold to me at a local farmer's market. And it's competitive in price with more run-of-the-mill stuff.
But the Americas can hold their own. While I consider arabica coffee in general to be a bit harsh, I've have good stuff (and non-so-good, alas) from Costa Rica. And if you're willing to sell the dog and kids, go for some uncut Jamaican Blue Mountain.
If coffee becomes sc
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Well.. they do regionally have a different aroma and taste. "Better" is an opinion of the taster. I'll also refrain from making fun of both of you for this.
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A Panamanian coffee (Esmeralda) has won tasting competitions a few times. Some of the best coffee in the world comes out of the Americas.
As long as the plantation is run well and is interested in producing good coffee, there are a lot of places that good coffee can come from.
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American business will grind to a halt!
More truth is said in jest. During WWII all kinds of stuff in the US was rationed, including sugar, butter, meat, etc., etc. Banana imports were halted (which is why Twinkies switched from banana to vanilla filling). One thing that was never rationed was coffee. The Arsenal of Democracy wouldn't have been worth squat if everybody was falling asleep.
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Give me Arabica from Java, Indonesia, equatorial Africa.
For clarification about arabica coffee: in my late 20s and early 30s (a very long time ago), I worked in the coffee import business. As I recall, there are two basic types of coffee; arabica and robusta. The arabica beans, no matter where they come from, are the superior coffee, at least with respect to flavor. Robusta beans are generally used as filler, or in manufactured coffee products like freeze-dried coffee, or in extremely dark roasts. Robusta beans do have one thing going for them (besides being che
I don't drink coffee (Score:4, Interesting)
"The integrity of this once-complicated ecosystem has been slowly breaking down, which is what happens when you try to grow coffee like corn."
So long as we don't try and grow corn like corn, I'm happy, I love my popcorn!
Perhaps the issue is not climate change, but rather some evolution of the coffee rust..
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Funny)
Monsanto Coffee. A new Starbucks option. Kills the rust. Only problem: turns coffee blue.
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Monsanto Coffee. A new Starbucks option. Kills the rust. Only problem: turns the drinker cyanotic.
FTFY
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I'm mostly confused that there apparently is such a thing as "good coffee"...
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I'm mostly confused that there apparently is such a thing as "good coffee"...
It's like "good beer." Some people just don't like it in general; it takes a really, really good one to be able to enjoy it, and that can depend on something as fickle as "I have a strange taste for $_specific_food."
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Funny)
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As far as many coffee lovers are concerned, the real reason not to drink Kopi Luwak is the same as the reason not to eat foie gras or white veal: animal welfare. If you pick up the beans that have been 'selected' by civets in the wild, that's one thing; but to cage the civets like battery hens and feed them any old coffee beans in the hope of achieving premium prices is rather different.
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Interesting)
They have some [good coffee] you can buy there, jackass.
Really? Name it. You'll be hard-pressed to find a single bean in a Starbucks that hasn't been intentionally over-roasted as part of their standard business practice. As should be obvious, the result of over-roasting is that your beans will give you a burnt ash flavor rather than a rich, nuanced coffee flavor, which is why so many people who have only ever been exposed to Starbucks (or worse) think that coffee by itself tastes bad, when it really doesn't. Several of us at my company nearly staged an uprising when an HR person who didn't know any better brought back a bag of "Starbucks Dark French Roast" for our several thousand dollar coffee machine to use, thinking she was doing us a favor.
(quick aside: to quote Wikipedia's definition for a French Roast - "Roast character is dominant at this level. Little, if any, of the inherent flavors of the coffee remain." I.e. It's been burnt to the point where you can't taste the coffee itself, and that's even before you take into account that a Starbucks "blonde" is actually a medium, their "medium" is a dark, and their "dark" is simply burnt beyond hope.)
As for why they over-roast, there are two main reasons. One is that more heavily roasted beans maintain a flavor for longer, giving them a longer shelf life. The other is that over-roasting produces a stronger (though worse) flavor that can stand out when you load your drink up with cream, caramel, sugar, whipped cream, ice, and whatever else. If they had instead used properly roasted beans, they'd have needed to increase the concentration of actual coffee in the drink (i.e. increase their costs), since the flavor of decent coffee is more subdued and would have a harder time standing out above that mess of excess. Instead, they cheated by increasing the strength of the flavor via over-roasting so that they could use as little coffee as possible, while compromising on the flavor of the most important ingredient itself.
And even if you go for their "blonde" roasts, they're still just average compared to decent ones you can pick up elsewhere. If you want some decent coffee without a lot of fuss, get it from a decent roaster as soon as possible after roasting (e.g. Tonx), and brew it properly (e.g. use a burr grinder and an Aeropress, for instance).
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:4, Informative)
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Starbucks collapsed in Australia since the place was already full of places with Italian style coffee for a cheaper price instead of some boiled mud tainted with mint, caramel or whatever.
Starbucks isn't mud.
It's charcoal.
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Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Funny)
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I always called them Charbucks - I guess we have the same opinion about their coffee roasting skills.
Apparently most of their customers add milk or some sort of creamer. Changes the character. If you add milk, charcoal evidently gives better flavor.
Since I don't add milk, I prefer other brands.
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:4, Interesting)
You have no idea how good Starbucks is until you try the abomination known as Folgers Crystals. If anyone was wondering, yes , you really can tell the difference. I thought, "it might not be the best thing ever, but coffee is coffee". Nope. I lowered the level of the first cup half an inch with great effort. I tried to pretend that I could save money for like... a minute. Then I dumped it down the drain. I went back to the Italian Via from Starbucks. Bear in mind that I prefer Kenyan from my own machine-- but it's broken. The Kenyan costs me $0.50 to make myself. The Via is $1.00/cup, and the dreaded crystals were something like $2 for a 7-pack. If I can't find a new machine I like, it's Via or Tea.
Anyway, yeah. It's burnt. There are worse things. Far, far worse. The so-called coffee you get at fast-food places or from machines in waiting rooms. No, I'm not saying Starbucks is the best thing on the planet. I'm just saying you forget how truly dismal the state of affairs was in American coffee before they came along.
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Hear, hear. And it's not just Starbucks; in the UK the two other major chains, Costa and Nero, are little different.
Thanks (Score:2)
-- a Peet's fan
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I smiled when I saw parent's post. Starbucks has terrible coffee for a "coffee" place. And this is coming from a guy that bought Dunkin Donuts coffee for two years while he lived in New England, so I don't think I'm being elitist... Dunkin coffee is drinkable, there are a few gas station chains in other areas with better, such as Wawa (PA, DE, VA).
For at home, I'm a big fan of the Trader Joe's Columbian. I have family send it to me, since I cannot buy it where I live now. I make it in a french press -- don'
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Funny)
It's what I do when I can't get to sleep. ;)
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Shoulda seen that one coming.
I actually make a point of avoiding caffeine after 7pm, and I typically only drink coffee in the mornings or maybe I'll have a cup after lunch during the winter. At this time of year, it's just too hot to enjoy coffee in the afternoons. Hell, it's nearly 2:30am right now, and I'm having to run the air conditioning since I got tired of it being 84F/29C in my bedroom (my tolerance for higher temperatures aimed at saving me on my electric bill is high, but does have its bounds). Th
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I only drink 1-2 cups a day, and only on weekdays, actually. I just really enjoy writing essay-like posts before bed sometimes. Helps me clear my head. ;)
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Well it is at least several times as good as Dunkin Donuts... sigh, life in New England.
Fortunately, I can make coffee at home. And my GF has introduced me to cuban coffee, made in that little espresso pot that sits on the stove - pure, strong espresso goodness. Or I can make in my regular espresso machine, with steam, latte, etc., or just straight, pure espresso coffee + sugar. (Cuban comes in a vacuum pack. Other vacuum packs are different, YMMV.)
Cuban (and other Caribbean) coffee is traditionally boiled in a sock, not an espresso pot. And no, you don't pull the sock out of the laundry.
Actually, real Cuban coffee looks like milk. Until you taste it. There's definitely coffee in there!
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Monsanto Coffee. A new Starbucks option. Kills the rust. Only problem: turns coffee blue.
Why is that a problem? Be a 21th century hipster and tell the curious passers-by that you're drinking Romulan ale!
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Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Insightful)
It may be both: evolution of the coffee rust driven by climate change.
Or it could be a lack of genetic diversity in the coffee trees. The fungus can spread through vast plantations of genetically similar arabica trees. The reason the rust has difficulty infecting wild trees may be because of their diversity, as well as their dispersion.
Disclaimer: I am a tea drinker.
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It may be both: evolution of the coffee rust driven by climate change.
Or it could be a lack of genetic diversity in the coffee trees. The fungus can spread through vast plantations of genetically similar arabica trees. The reason the rust has difficulty infecting wild trees may be because of their diversity, as well as their dispersion.
Disclaimer: I am a tea drinker.
There are 2 ways to grow coffee. You can clear land and plant trees industrial-fashion, which is very efficient - and more likely to expose you to mass infections. Or you can plant the trees in a habitat approximating their wild state, where the coffee trees are interspersed with non-coffee trees and grow shaded. One is efficient and makes for cheaper coffee. The other is not so efficient, but the quality of the coffee is a lot better. It's also likely to slow down propagation of epidemic infections, since
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, as someone whose family has owned coffee farms for over 100 years let me clue you in.
Traditional coffee plants can last 20 years, they grow tall, shade the ground, and drop the leaves to fertilize the soil, have root systems that keep the soil in place, since coffee is grown in steppes.
However, they are hybribs created in Brazil, that grow faster, less root systems, but need constant fertilization, and the root systems are shallow, causing run off of the soil, lower quality bean, But they produce like hell. But the constant fertilization they need ruins the land.
They are also highly susceptible to root rust.
It is not so much the climate change, but the mass production from genetically manipulated plants.
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Thanks very much Juan!
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Thanks very much Juan!
That's Sr. Valdez, to you!
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Whether you're working at a molecular level, or using techniques first outlined by Mendel with his peas, it's still a genetically manipulated plant. You're using techniques to encourage the expression of particular genetic traits, or suppress particular traits.
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Same here. Mt Dew for the win!!
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:4, Informative)
They should have listened to Juan Valdez. He's the fucking expert.
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing with rust is that it goes in waves - people were freaking out over the rust sweeping through the evergreen population in Ontario and for a while it was bad, but then nature sorted it out and it's still present but not everywhere/killing all the trees like it was.
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From TFA,
"Nobody knows precisely why the outbreak reached such extraordinary levels this year, though several factors are implicated. The most prominent is climate: In the past, environmental conditions at high Central American altitudes were not especially conducive to the fungus, which requires warm, humid air to thrive, said coffee rust specialist Cathy Aime of Purdue University."
Fungus doesn't need to evolve to strive if the local climate changes to accommodate it.
Re:I don't drink coffee (Score:5, Informative)
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This sentence is wrong in so many ways. Coffee is an old world plant, originally from Africa. Dutch took it to Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) and planted it (on the way to Indonesia). It was there that Rust started infecting Coffee plants and this started in the early 1900s or before.
Later on Robusta was discovered as a plant that was resistant to rust and fruits faster
Seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does every problem we face today come back to global warming? Oh wait, that is not the correct buzz word, because the planet is actually cooling, not getting warmer... I'm sorry, I meant "climate change".
Re:Seriously? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does ever bible thumper consider it a bad thing to change ones mind about something in light of new data?
Why does everyone else do that too? I guess because we've evolved not to readily change our minds. Maybe it was bad for us if we changed our minds too much about saber-tooth tigers or poisonous plants. "I think poison ivy changed due to a dream vision I had last night. Let's roll in it!"
I find it remarkable how anti-scientific some of the attitudes among the supposedly pro-science side are. Here, you are complaining about "bible thumpers" merely because they exhibit a universal human behavior.
As to your "data", I think it's painfully clear that the researcher (who was quoted on the climate change allegation) is tying coffee rust to climate change in order to sell their story and attract funding rather than tell a more plausible story. Where is the discussion of evolution of coffee rust, bad farming practices, and the presence of more susceptible coffee plants (they need not be at the same farm as the "fine coffee" plants)?
Also psychology (Score:4)
Part of this is also psychology. We're wired to dislike being wrong, especially in public - it indicates to others that we aren't fit for reproduction. Most people would rather dig their heels in than admit they're wrong (viz: any government official).
You first have to pop the person out of heuristic mode [wikipedia.org] and into systemic mode. The easiest way to do this is to phrase the information as a question. Best is constructing the question in a "leading" way to encourage them to choose your side of an issue..
So for example:
"Would you support the ban on Child Pornography if it resulted in more children being molested?"
(CP being the most emotional hot-button issue I can think of.)
(For more info, "The Psychology of Selling" [amazon.com] has a lot of down-to-Earth information on convincing people.)
The Day Coffee Stopped Working (Score:5, Interesting)
Coffee is threatened? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Coffee is threatened? (Score:4, Funny)
I refuse to believe that change is bad. Change is the one thing in life that we can depend on. Our constant companion. I embrace change of any kind. Besides I prefer Mormon Tea to coffee. As long as Ma Huang is not affected I will continue to bask in the warmth of the ever changing climate.
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I once thought as you. Then I plotted all the changes of the world that I could. After marveling at the cycles in the energies of life, I forced myself to take a step back and plot the general reduction in the diversity of life over time. I will not do this for you, because your sanity is valuable to me. In short, there is a dead-line by which sentient AI must be born in order to carry the human spirit of exploration and science onward.
First they came for the Coffee Tree, but I did nothing, because I
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I refuse to believe that change is bad.
When you change from living to dead because you can't get water, your estimation will revise from refusing to believe to being unable to believe.
Re:Coffee is threatened? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now only if anything in the article actually led to the conclusion that climate change has anything to do with the increased spread of this disease, rather than massive plantations of a monoculture of genetically near-identical plants.
But yeah, I'm sure it's climate change that's causing it.
Re:Coffee is threatened? (Score:4, Insightful)
Good luck getting the deniers to accept that it is actually climate change that's affecting the coffee supply.
Rather than evolution of coffee rust, bad farming practices, and development and planting of coffee plants more susceptible to coffee rust? I imagine it won't be the least bit difficult.
It Happened to Chocolate 100 Years Ago (Score:5, Informative)
http://worldfamousdesignjunkies.com/food/rare-near-extinct-fine-chocolate-rediscovered-in-peru/ [worldfamou...unkies.com]
"Pure Nacional, with its complex fruit and floral flavors, once dominated the fine chocolate market worldwide. In 1916, diseases struck the Pure Nacional population in Ecuador and within three years 95% of the trees were destroyed. The prized chocolate was thought to be lost, until now."
It happened to bananas, too (Score:5, Interesting)
The banana that many of us (at least those of us over a certain age) grew up snacking on now is extinct. As a result of a banana monoculture and an ever-mutating fungus, the Gros Michael variety of banana is no more.
Without the public noticing, around 1960 the Gros Michael disappeared and Chiquita (aka United Brands) replaced it with the much less tasty Cavendish variety. Well, actually banana eaters did notice that bananas had suddenly gotten less snackable but nobody gave a reason or acknowledged that anything was wrong. Eventually people came to accept the Cavendish while still thinking that bananas weren't as good as they used to be.
And now the Cavendish banana is going the same way as the Gros Michael thanks to the same monoculture farming technique. And there may not be a replacement.
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And now the Cavendish banana is going the same way as the Gros Michael thanks to the same monoculture farming technique. And there may not be a replacement.
Except for the next monoculture varieties that they come up with. It's just not that hard. They could also switch back to the Gros Michael. It's still around.
Re:It happened to bananas, too (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't care if the Cavendish goes extinct (along with the farms that grow it), as you said it's near tasteless - a good potato is even tastier. Perhaps it's only good as an edible stage prop - more photogenic.
Plenty of other tastier banana breeds available and strangely many seem cheaper than the Cavendish in my country. So all that monoculture etc doesn't actually make it cheaper to me - maybe it makes it more profitable to the ones selling it?
Example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Finger_banana [wikipedia.org]
For more see: http://www.agroforestry.net/tti/Banana-plantain-overview.pdf [agroforestry.net]
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GMO!
GMO!
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Re:It happened to bananas, too (Score:5, Informative)
A couple of notes - it's "Gros Michel", and you're right, by all accounts it was a much tastier banana - more fruity. Cavendish is so unfruity it might as well be a grain. All Cavendish plants worldwide are clones - identical plants. Cavendish, like Navel Oranges, produce no seeds. The impact of this change was huge - Cavendish bananas are extremely sensitive to bruising so an entire new bush-to-ship-to-distributor-to-store system had to be developed, that protected the bananas from any stress. The bananas had to be shipped in clusters. The ships were even different.
But there are 700 other species of banana. There are at least two major research thrusts - genetic engineering (trying to engineer a resistant version), and selective breeding & hybridization (trying to breed a new banana by cross breeding existing plants with desirable characteristics). IMHO it would be at least as effective to just provide a wider range of bananas in the store at a reasonable price - so far all the alternatives have been 2X or 3X the price of Cavendish.
A company I'm looking at is also working on an epigenetic solution - exposing the undifferentiated stem cells to stresses that will hopefully encourage the banana plants to express their genes differently, including genes that provide resistance.
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Wikipedia claims
"In the 1950s the Panama disease, a wilt caused by the fungus Fusarium oxysporum, wiped out vast tracts of ‘Gros Michel’ plantations in South America and Africa, but the cultivar survived in Thailand."
I know wikipedia can be manipulated but still I trust is more than an anonymous coward on /.
Climate or planting methods? (Score:2, Insightful)
So from the fine article it appears that the spread of coffee rust could have something to do with the changes in cultivation practices. Or we could get climate alarmists all excited by blaming climate change. Reading carefully, it's clear that cultivation practices have a lot to do with the rust outbreak. But we can get climate alarmists all excited by blaming climate change. Woo!
Is there nothing climate change can't do? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not known yet exactly why coffee rust has become such a problem now, but one of the leading suspects is climate change.
Here's another eye-rolling moment from the chicken littles who can't be bothered to decide what climate change is. From the article,
âoeThereâ(TM)s increasing evidence that climate change is part of the problem. You find coffee rust striking much farther up the valleys than it used to. Thereâ(TM)s no other plausible explanation,â Baker said. âoeBut what happened last year, and why it was so aggressive and widespread, weâ(TM)re still a bit [perplexed]. And if we donâ(TM)t really know what caused it, itâ(TM)s going to be hard to predict.â
Another plausible explanation, especially given the more virulent nature of this coffee rust problem, is that it has evolved or a new strain has moved in. That wasn't hard. Note that the researcher is confident that "climate change" is involved, but far less confident that biology is involved.
This is a researcher in the field making these claims not some ignorant Wired writer. I see this as further evidence that climatology has been taken over by political forces. A scientist makes an overly confident claim about "climate change" and it gets readily and uncritically reported by a high profile news source. And the take away that the reader gets is that their coffee is threatened by climate change. That's a classic propaganda move.
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Undoing moderation. Be nice if Slashdot would add an undo feature.
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Note that the researcher is confident that "climate change" is involved, but far less confident that biology is involved.
Funny enough, climate and biology do not operate independently.
Re:Is there nothing climate change can't do? (Score:5, Insightful)
Funny enough, climate and biology do not operate independently.
I grant that. But note again, how confident the researcher is in one and not the other.
The real cause of the coming zombie apocalypse (Score:5, Funny)
Millions of people roaming the earth in a state that is neither alive nor dead. All in search of caffeine; not brains.
Cheers,
Dave
Farming Techniques... and Zombies (Score:2)
As the article points out, I'm wondering if farming techniques and the propensity to have homogenous crops are more to blame than climate change. True, temperature rises means that plants at various elevations are more susceptible to the disease, but the spread seems, in my opinion, to be more related to plants that are close together and of the same genetic variety. Its possible that if they spread things out and plant different variants that the problem wouldn't be as pronounced.
Of course, without coffee
Well (Score:2)
Maybe, just maybe the undesired organisms are getting adapted to the poisons, survive and hamper production?
It's big business for the chemical industry selling all that poison....
Just had a cup from the office vending machine (Score:2)
Shoes for industry! (Score:2)
Yes, dear friends, soon heavy industry will make it possible for everyone to have their own coffee!
Monsanto wouldn't have it any other way.
Fringe had it right (Score:2)
Climate change is a scam (Score:2)
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I can't find a reference but at a "coming out" party for Pure Nacional chocolate, one of the presenters implied that it died out so quickly because of monoculture.
gros michel and panama disease redux (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. Monoculture was the first thing I thought of. That's why we can only get bland Cavendish bananas in the US now, which rot before they will sweeten, instead of sweet, delicious Gros Michels. Panama disease killed off the vast majority of Gros Michel bananas and the Cavendish was selected solely for its resistance to that disease. Not for its taste.
Strawberries in Egypt (Score:4, Interesting)
Same for Strawberries in Egypt in the last quarter of the 20th century. The cultivar that was used initially was so sweet and fragrant, but did not keep well in the heat of Egypt and could not withstand transportation with heavy loss. Enter the current cultivar: much bigger fruits that look better, significantly harder, and almost tasteless, like the ones you find in the USA/Canada supermarkets. The older cultivar vanished in a year or two.
It was not disease, but yield that did it.
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Coffee futures are down, supplies are up.
This is true [denverpost.com]
This is just another warmist scare story.
The last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm was a very long time ago, way before neanderthals, at the time of homo erectus. Maybe it's not unreasonable to worry.
Re:Don't panic (Score:5, Funny)
This is just another warmist scare story.
The last time CO2 levels were at 400ppm was a very long time ago, way before neanderthals, at the time of homo erectus. Maybe it's not unreasonable to worry.
Why worry? First - the neanderthals are extinct, second - they didn't drink coffee.
(ducks)
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Why worry? First - the neanderthals are extinct, second - they didn't drink coffee.
Maybe they went extinct because their coffee plantations all rusted away?
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Uninformed opinion. Mammals are at least as old as dinosaurs and some findings indicate that they're even older! Thank $DEITY for the yucatan meteorite!
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Interesting)
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No you moron. Much further back.
Are people retarded? They don't know a difference between 10,000 years and 2,000,000 years?? That's well over 20 ice ages ago. Get a clue.
The only thing we are moving into the 6th Great Extinction caused by ourselves. Pat yourselves on the back. Your ignorance deserves it.
http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/28/the-sixth-great-extinction-a-silent-extermination/ [nationalgeographic.com]
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Interesting)
Fortunately coffee is a C3 plant, and should respond well to a CO2-enriched atmosphere.
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They don't call them robusta for nothing.
Bitter like hell. I prefer uncured olives over robusta.
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It's cool. Everyone thinks they make the best coffee and beer. It's a thing.
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"Not trying to be trollish but"
Slashdot should automatically prefix that to every post.
didn't fail (Score:2)
being a proud member of the minority. I demand good coffee!
I'd rather go without than get coffee at mcdonalds
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And so long as there is enough beer, people have a remedy for worrying about other shortages.
Re:maybe it's a sign (Score:4, Funny)
I like being a "self-important, hippie, too-cool-for-you douchebag".
Come join us,
it's only $5.
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For the more enlightened of us self-important, hippie, too-cool-for-you douchebags, coffee breath is an *aphrodisiac*. Although I would concur that the crap at McBuck's doesn't rate.
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and VIOLA!
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. [wikipedia.org]
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no corn in the old world.