It’s certainly interesting that people are exploring other options for creating hot dark beverages that taste at least somewhat similar to coffee, but it’s also entirely possible that synthesized caffeine makes its way into other beverages entirely. Obviously there’s tea as a substitute, but there are also lots of soft drinks and energy drinks with caffeine.
So long as caffeine remains cheap, increasing price of coffee will likely be met with caffeinated substitutes that have nothing to do with the coffee plant.
I find it interesting that they glossed over the simplest solution, which would be switch to buying sustainable, shade-grown coffee thus forcing coffee plantations switch to it from market pressure. But I realize it’s not the main topic of the article and that has its own issues - how to make sure it really is sustainably shade-grown, for one.
But also, maybe this is my cynicism showing, did anyone else think these sustainable coffee-esque options wouldn’t stay sustainable if they became popular? Especially with something like annual crops, once other companies see there’s money to be made they’ll jump on the trend and now land (and forests) is being cleared for these crops.
I live in New Zealand, a place with a climate not too dissimilar to the UK though I’m told we see the sun more often.
A few years back we had our first commercial coffee growing operation set up.
You can buy it here.
That’s about USD$33 for 180g (coffee is a drug so I assume sold in grams in the US?), so it’s nothing short of “pretty fucking expensive”, but still interesting (horrifying?) that a commercial coffee operation can work here.
You’d think that, but it is not. I buy 12oz bags of coffee. Alcohol is also sold in both fl oz and ml, so a bottle of beer is 12oz, and a bottle of booze is 750ml.
Hmm ok, well apparently 12oz is 340g, we’d never see coffee sold in that weight. Normally 200g (7oz), 500g (17.6oz, 1.1lb), or 1kg (35oz, 2.2lb). The one linked is a bit smaller than standard at 180g (6.3oz).
Yeah, that is pretty small and very expensive. Around Seattle I pay $15-$20 for a 12oz (340g) bag of specialty coffee
During periods of short supply and/or increased coffee has been often been replaced or augmented by various other ingredients. For example:
… during the American Civil War, Louisianans looked to adding chicory root to their coffee when Union naval blockades cut off the port of New Orleans. With shipments coming to a halt, desperate New Orleanians looking for their coffee fix began mixing things with coffee to stretch out the supply. Acorns or beets (cafe de betterave) also did the trick. Though chicory alone is devoid of the alkaloid that gives you a caffeine buzz, the grounds taste similar and can be sold at a lower rate. – source
