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."
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..
The Day Coffee Stopped Working (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't panic (Score:4, Interesting)
Fortunately coffee is a C3 plant, and should respond well to a CO2-enriched atmosphere.
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.
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]
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.
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, 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.