Starbucks Created Coffee Seeds That Can Survive Climate Change
One small glimmer of hope for all us coffee lovers
Hiya!
I limit myself to two cups of coffee a day, but I also use a giant mug to stretch that self-restriction to its limit. Tea is great, too. I drink it most afternoons, but coffee… coffee is my life source. And I’m not alone. According to Statista Consumer Insights, nearly 80 percent of people in America drank two or more cups of coffee — over half consumed three or more — while at home on a weekday in 2021.
The same survey showed that 51 percent of American adults between the ages of 18 and 74 agreed with the following statement: “Coffee is pure pleasure to me.” More than just agreeing with that statement, I feel it in my soul. Unfortunately, coffee, like many other crops, is threatened by climate change. The good news is that Starbucks announced it created a new line of coffee seeds that can withstand global warming-related climate fluctuations.
Coffee Beans and Climate Change
Coffee has a long history with our species and remains cherished by people worldwide. Considering this and the overwhelming options in your grocery store’s coffee aisle, you might assume, like I did, that there are many types of coffee plants.
Yet, remarkably, most coffee comes from only two plant species — arabica and robusta. However, arabica is significantly more popular between the two, accounting for 70 percent of global coffee production. One sip, and it’s clear why. Coffee made from arabica beans is less acidic and smoother in flavor, often with fruity undertones. Meanwhile, robusta coffee has a more bitter, grainy flavor and is most commonly used to make instant coffee.
Robusta beans, while more bitter in flavor, are hardier than the delicate arabica and can tolerate warmer temperatures. Robusta plants originated in central and western sub-Saharan Africa but can grow in both the Northern and Southern hemispheres and in a broader range of climates compared to arabica.
Arabica coffee was first grown in Arabia between 500 and 900 CE, though it’s native to Ethiopia. Today, arabica crops are primarily located in Central and South America. While more people may prefer the taste of arabica coffee, its sensitivity to environmental temperature fluctuations makes it more vulnerable to crop loss and premature ripening.
Arabica plants also have less diversity than the robusta plant, making the arabica more prone to diseases. However, erratic weather and disease aren’t the only challenges to coffee’s survival. Research indicates climate change will shrink the land available to grow plants by over half.
Today thought, the most dangerous threat feared by farmers is leaf rust — a fungus that thrives in warm, wet conditions and is known to take over plants and decimate crops. In 1869, one such leaf fungus plague overtook arabica crops in Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka). Some reports say the disease “reached virtually every corner of Asia and the western Pacific.”
Sarada Krishnan, a coffee grower and scientist at the Crop Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to conserving crop diversity, explained to The Guardian:
“When smallholder farmers get [leaf rust], they lose and their whole income for the year is gone. Last year toward the end of the harvest, the rust came, and if you let the rust take over then you lose the plant and it will take five years to get a fruit crop.”
Smallholder farmers aren’t the only ones concerned about the fragility of the arabica plant. Starbucks is highly invested in the longevity of the popular bean, considering it’s the only coffee bean type the corporation uses in its almost 37,000 locations worldwide.
Enter Starbucks
I’ll be the first to point out that some controversial topics have been circulating in the news about Starbucks lately, but I’ll also admit that the company has done some good things. In 2004, Starbucks created the Coffee and Farmer Equity Practices — the coffee industry’s first ethical sourcing standard.
Then, in 2013, Starbucks purchased Hacienda Alsacia — 240 hectares on the slopes of Poas Volcano in Costa Rica — and made it their only farm and includes over 800,000 coffee trees. Hacienda Alsacia is also the only hub for Starbucks’ global research, development, and innovation.
There, agronomists Sara Bogantes and Carlos Mario developed six climate and leaf-rust-resistant arabica coffee seeds that also taste good. Further, these seeds have been shown to produce a higher yield within a shorter timeframe.
The company claims it has no interest in keeping these newly developed seeds for themselves. On the contrary, Starbucks is giving all six varieties away — for free — to farmers, who are in turn free to sell their resulting crops to any buyers they want even if it isn’t Starbucks.
The corporation reported that they’ve bought from about 400,000 farmers across 30 countries and have given away around three million of their new climate-resistant seeds to farms in Costa Rica, China, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru — every year for the last five years.
Perspective Shift
While researching today’s topic, I found a couple of reports by the Royal Botanical Gardens interesting and thought I’d share them.
One from 2020 predicts that a combination of land clearing, over-harvesting wild plant species, and fluctuating climate conditions could lead to the extinction of about 40 percent of all known edible crops. Meanwhile, the other more recent report from 2023 claims that 45 percent of all flowering plants are at risk of extinction due to climate change.
People in the future may not have apples, avocados, bananas, chili peppers, ginger, husk tomatoes, potatoes, prunes, squash, wild cotton, wild beans, or vanilla — butat least there will be coffee.
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Well, I am grateful someone is looking out for our long-term mental health (Starbucks I mean in this case).
“When smallholder farmers get [leaf rust]” made me wonder just how this is spread, the air? Soil? Cross contamination from tools and people who come in contact with the crop? When I read that I thought of large greenhouses and extra caution around soil contamination (thinking small local scale, gotta start somewhere)Not sure if it would be enough to prevent it though.