Risks exist for coffee. Starbucks is attempting to find remedies

 Risks exist for coffee. Starbucks is attempting to find remedies

The most widely consumed kind, arabica coffee, is a delicate crop. Additionally, farmers and the coffee industry are both greatly threatened by climate change.

According to the Inter-American Development Bank, a financial agency serving Latin America and the Caribbean, "coffee crops require specific temperature, light, and humidity levels to grow properly." According to a recent IADB assessment, those requirements are currently largely satisfied in some regions of Latin America, particularly the coffee belt.

The bank cautioned, however, that by 2050 "rising temperatures will reduce the area suitable for growing coffee by up to 50%." IADB indicated that some countries would be able to adapt coffee in a new way due to climate change.

However, something has to happen for coffee to continue thriving where it is presently.

Therefore, Starbucks, which claims to buy about 3% of the coffee produced worldwide, is creating new arabica varieties that are specifically grown to withstand the effects of global warming. Coffee leaf rust is a disease that affects coffee trees and is made worse by climate change. For more than ten years, agronomists at Starbucks have been breeding various types of coffee trees in an effort to find ones that will produce a large amount of fruit in a short amount of time and, among other things, resist it.

The corporation tested hundreds of kinds before settling on six that suit the bill and satisfy its taste and flavor requirements. The company's Hacienda Alsacia coffee plantation, an instructional and research facility in Costa Rica, offers farmers a catalog outlining its six new types.

Each plant's flavor profile is listed in the catalog. Another has a citrus, herbal, and flowery flavor, while the first brews coffee with notes of melon, honey, and sugar cane. The catalog also describes how the plant will grow, including its size and structure, the altitudes at which it will live, and how many years it will take before it starts making a produce.

According to Michelle Burns, executive vice president of international coffee, social impact, and sustainability at Starbucks, "a number of the varietals that we're working with and developing are seeing their harvest in [a] two-year cycle," as opposed to three or four years. If all goes according to plan, Starbucks and its suppliers will benefit from having more coffee available faster.

Weather arrives for coffee

Starbucks, which has around 36,000 stores worldwide, is very dependent on farmers; it sources its products from about 400,000 farmers in 30 different countries. They are having trouble adjusting to the effects of global warming, along with other coffee farmers throughout the world.

Suzanne Shriner, president of Lions Gate Farms in Hawaii, which is not a supplier to Starbucks, has noticed a significant impact from climate change.

She noted that the rainfall has grown more sporadic and that when it does occur, it is more intense, which is difficult on the plants.

According to Shriner, growers in Hawaii are collaborating with World Coffee Research, a nonprofit organization that collaborates with the industry, including Starbucks, to find a solution to coffee leaf rust, which has become a significant issue in the area.

She stated, "We're watching the Starbucks program closely. We're looking for similar breeding innovations."

Of course, coffee is not the only crop at danger from climate change. Any agricultural crop, from grapes to cocoa, can have its yields destroyed by drought, freezing temperatures, or severe rainfall. Additionally, because extreme weather is unexpected, it is challenging for farmers to effectively plan for these shifts.

But Starbucks only uses arabica coffee, which is particularly vulnerable.

dealing with leaf rust

There is a "urgent need" to create new climate-resistant arabica coffee varietals, according to Miguel Gomez, a professor of food marketing at Cornell's Dyson University of Applied Economics and Management.

Arabica plants as they are now "are not resistant to water stresses," he claimed. The presence of diseases like leaf rust, which are present anytime there are extremely high temperatures, makes them more vulnerable.

For growers, a tree resistant to coffee rust would be a desirable choice. However, Monika Firl, senior advisor for Fairtrade International's coffee program, cautioned that it will not solve the myriad issues caused by climate change.

There is no magic solution to climate change, the speaker declared.

Nature "adapts faster than the laboratory science does," she continued. Breeds that are bred to thrive in one environment may struggle in another, thus a remedy may be effective right away but not in the long run.

According to Firl, the industrialized coffee farm paradigm needs to be abandoned for coffee to be sustainably produced. She asserted that in order to support a robust ecology, "we need to bring coffee back to its forest roots."

Starbucks pledged to support forest preservation and restoration in 2021 in addition to establishing other climate-related objectives. Burns referred to the company's breeding effort as a "ongoing" process and stated that the business would continue to experiment with new varietals in order to adapt to climate change.

In these challenging circumstances, other coffee kinds, such robusta and liberica, perform better than arabica. However, coffee makers typically steer clear of these types because consumers prefer the flavor and aroma of arabica, according to Cornell's Gomez. The objective is to create cultivars that have the same flavor as arabica but are tougher than other varieties.

securing the supply chain for coffee

Starbucks identified a supply chain risk that might have "an adverse impact on our business and financial results": "increases in the cost of high-quality arabica coffee beans... or decreases in the availability of high-quality arabica coffee beans."

It identified a number of variables that could impact coffee supply and pricing. In addition to other issues, bad weather, reduced water availability, and crop diseases can raise the cost of coffee purchased by Starbucks or perhaps completely cut back on supply. "Climate change may further exacerbate many of these factors," the paper stated.

Starbucks offered farmers climate-resistant seeds created by others (and occasionally modified by Starbucks) even before it created its own varieties of climate-resistant plants.

Over the previous five years, it has sent three million seeds annually, according to the business. As part of its ambition to give away 100 million trees by 2025, Starbucks has also given growers roughly 70 million coffee rust-resistant trees.