Farmer
Coffee beans comprise about 80 percent of crops and income for Hamilton Vidurrizaga, a farmer in Villa Rica, a district about 250 miles east of Lima in the heart of Peru’s Amazon. Like many in the region, he is part of a long-running family history and tradition of working with the land. Peru is one of the world’s top 15 exporters of coffee products, according to the International Trade Centre. Changes in climate — like longer summers and less rain — have already created production problems for Vidurrizaga and, he says, they continue to worsen. Coffee exports from Peru declined 20 percent between 2014 and 2015, according to the ITC. If Vidurrizaga’s coffee production was to be cut in half, as the Climate Institute report predicts, Vidurrizaga says it would become unsustainable for him to continue growing coffee and he would likely have to charge more for his product.
Roaster
For James Peters, the founder of ChocoSombra, a coffee importer and roaster in the U.S., opportunities to grow coffee sustainably are what attracted him to invest. He buys single origin beans through a direct trade system and, he says, would sooner go out of business than change his business model. Conscious of the creeping dangers of climate change, Peters has partnered with researchers who view climate change as an opportunity to develop innovative solutions and works closely with his farmers to ensure they have the resources they need to sustain the cycle. But the real responsibility, he says, lies with the consumer making the choice between “the economics of self-interest and an enlightened global view.” Lavazza, a large coffee manufacturer in Italy, boasted nearly $8 million in investment in sustainability in a report released last week.
Retailer
The folks at Gravel & Grind, a local coffee shop about an hour west of the District of Columbia, source their house coffee beans from ChocoSombra and share a similar ethical commitment. “We are willing to pay a premium for a quality coffee with a good story,” says co-owner James Johnson. If climate change forces those coffee bean prices go up, he says, they will have to raise their retail prices, too. But, he says, he believes there will always be a market in consumers also willing to pay a premium. “Like a good wine or a good craft beer, when you see a $5.50 cup of coffee, there’s a reason for it, and people are willing to accept that,” he says.
Consumer
It seems Johnson’s intuitions hold true. The average retail price of a pound of coffee around the globe rose from $4.15 in 2000 to $6.00 in 2015, according to the International Coffee Organization, but coffee drinkers haven’t been deterred. In the U.S., the world’s lead coffee consumer, nearly two-thirds of people have been drinking an average of three cups of coffee each day since 1999, according to a Gallup poll.
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How Climate Change Affects Coffee?s Economic Chain originally appeared on usnews.com
