How coffee became an unstoppable force
Today, even countries such as China – which have traditionally favoured tea – are now coming to appreciate coffee’s allure. As a sign of its growth, consider this: Starbucks opened their first store in Beijing 1999. Today, they open a new store in China every 15 hours.
Whereas most people had drunk instant coffee at home in the past, younger Chinese people are increasingly buying into its social appeal, as well as developing more refined tastes for artisan blends in speciality coffee shops. Sally Wu, the founder of Seesaw coffee, a chain of 22 speciality coffee shops, argues that the drink is now being appreciated in China like “fine wine”.
Between 1992 and 2017, there has been a 6% year-on-year growth in demand for coffee in Asia as a whole – which is around three times as fast as the rest of the world. “It’s a very exciting market,” says Sette. Even so, the demand in Asia is still very far behind that of more established coffee-drinking regions: in 2017, Japan was the largest consumer in Asia, drinking 4.5% of the world’s coffee, while South Korea, imported 2% and China and Hong Kong lagging at just 0.76% each. The USA, in contrast, imported 20%, and Germany 11%.
But there are obstacles to this growing thirst, the foremost being climate change. Remember that the Arabica plant is incredibly sensitive to heat and rainfall – meaning that rising global temperatures and more irregular weather spell trouble for its long-term survival.
One simulation by Oriana Ovalle-Rivera at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture in Colombia, for instance, predicts that Brazil will lose 25% of its suitable land for cultivating Arabica by 2050. At Daterra, the managers have already noticed that maintaining a high quality of bean, at a high yield, has become more challenging over the last 10 years, a fact that they put down to climate change.
Aaron Davis, a researcher at Kew Gardens, London, agrees that this is a serious problem. Since coffee plants are slow to develop, any unusual fluctuation in the climate could influence growth years later, he says. “So you only need a few or even one perturbation to have a have a big impact.”
Davis points out that in some countries, such as Ethiopia, areas at higher altitudes that were previously too chilly to grow the crop might become more suitable for coffee farms as temperatures shift. But that will cause huge disruptions. “It’ll be a situation that farmers growing coffee for generations won’t be growing coffee, and others will steadily find that they can,” he says. This is already happening in some areas, he says. “People are growing coffee at elevations where they weren’t growing and where it was grown, now not suitable… Coffee is moving.”
There may be other options. There are many species of coffee plant, besides Arabica – some of which are hardier. The most well-known, Coffea robusta, is already used for some drinks – including instant blends – though it is generally considered too bitter for most coffee aficionados. But other varieties may be more suitable. Using selective breeding, it may one day be possible to produce crops that are hardier than existing Arabica plants, but equally appealing in flavour. Farms like Daterra are already experimenting with different crops to try to achieve the best yield even in unstable climates.
For the millions of people currently involved in coffee’s cultivation and production, and indeed for any of us who enjoy a morning espresso to kickstart the day, let’s hope they succeed.
Image credits: Lion TV, Getty Images
Graphics sources: Oriana Ovalle-Rivera et al., Observatory for Economic Complexity
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