Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
Issue link: http://freshcup.epubxp.com/i/59523
* he coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) has no problem accepting the reality of climate change. It's too busy expanding its range to lobby the U.S. government on emissions caps or to write editorials for or against inter- national climate treaties. For the borer, there is no climate debate. There is only profit from a warming world. You won't find much debate among coffee farmers in origin countries, either. As weather becomes less predictable, many struggle to maintain consistency, allocate labor and plan ahead. All along the supply chain, cof- fee workers cope with disruption while coffee federations and other umbrella organizations race to develop adaptive strategies. Climate change's impact on the global coffee supply has gar- nered broad media coverage in the past year. But its effects on quality are equally, if not more, significant, particularly for spe- cialty coffee retailers. How these effects are handled will have far-reaching consequences for the long-term economic viability of the sector, your shop included. THE NEW NORMAL Last October, industry titan Starbucks hinted that climate change could cause "significant risk" to its supply chain within as little as 10 years. The announcement generated headlines, but in fact Starbucks was reiterating what many in the industry had been saying for several years: Climate change is real and is happening now, and the specialty coffee industry needs to pay attention. Climate is changing globally. It's changing fast. And it is conforming to some of the more dire projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In the tropics, where coffee has its roots, record rainfall, droughts and devastating storms are being accepted by many as "the new normal." Farmers of Arabica coffee face special challenges because their plant is so finicky. It requires a narrow band of temperature and moisture, and above all, stability. Hotter and drier conditions, such as those expected at the northern end of Arabica's range, mean fewer and less appealing cherries. Such weather also means less water available for irrigation and washing. Cooler and wetter conditions, such as Colombia's unprecedented deluges, bring an overabundance, stressing available picking, pro- cessing and storage capacity. Washed-out roads don't help, either. Mike Perry, roastmaster and owner of Upland, Calif.-based INFECTED: More humid conditions have made life more comfortable for the coffee berry borer, which has led to a spread of coffee leaf rust. Klatch Coffee, saw all of this and more on a recent trip to Central America. "In some countries, the early rain caused many of the trees to ripen at the same time, making picking and pro- cessing a challenge," he says. "Others were seeing a later crop. On some trees, the cherries were going from ripe to black (over- ripe) really quick," he says. For small producers, picking cher- ries is only the beginning of the headache. "I saw many smaller farmers with their houses filled with bags of coffee," he says. "In Honduras, small family producers had nowhere to put coffee after it was milled. Their small patios were full with coffee that had been there for a week and was still not dry. I saw people trying to dry beans everywhere they could, even on their rooftops." These factors conspire to undermine coffee quality. "Climate change is counterproductive to quality," says Tracy Allen, a trained agronomist and CEO of Kansas City, Mo.-based Brewed Behavior. Allen is concerned about how excess carbon dioxide can retard enzymatic processes, resulting in underdevel- oped beans. He is not alone in noticing more quakers and floaters (unripe beans) in the past couple of seasons, and he thinks that if what he is seeing were to continue, it would be "the symptom of a bigger issue" for coffee quality. "Defect classes are like credit scores," he says. "The whole scale will slide." Willem Boot, founder and president of Mill Valley, Calif.-based Boot Coffee Consulting and Training, notes that warmer, more humid conditions will encourage the coffee berry borer to extend its range and foster the spread of coffee leaf rust. "When it attacks the tree at ripening, it infects the leaves and affects the ability of the tree to take in nutrients," he says. Cupping is the industry's ultimate guarantee of quality, yet here, too, climate change is throwing knuckleballs. David Griswold, president and founder of Portland, Ore.-based importer Sustainable Harvest, notes that the incessant rains in Peru and Colombia have increased the danger of inconsistency. The result: Cupping teams are being sent out more often and to more places— like the coffee equivalent of firefighters—to assure quality. "It's a huge production," Griswold notes, "and very expensive." This micro-climatic aspect has macro repercussions for the future of coffee. Peter Laederach, of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), has been a leading voice in research and public policy around coffee. He has been able to downscale regional climate statistics—which aren't very useful for an indus- try based on the uniqueness of individual terroirs—to make strong predictions about several smaller coffee-growing areas. For continued on page 48 freshcup.com April 2012 47 NEIL PLAMER (CIAT)