Saving Your Morning Brew: The Urgent Need for Sustainable Coffee Practices

Every day, a student at the University of Manchester drinks, on average, 2 cups of coffee. We do not pay much attention to coffee beyond its magical effects during the long study days and abilities to bring us to life. What if I told you that in the next 20 years, you might not be able to get any more coffee? 60% of species of coffee plants, including those used for the production of coffee enjoyed by you, may well go extinct by 2050 (Tanner, 2019). Not the most pleasant news to receive, is it? So, what is the problem, and what can we do to solve it?

A coffee tree needs 3 to 4 years to grow and start yielding the berries, which are then picked and sold as green coffee beans to enter roasters around the world, turn brown and be packaged to arrive at your local coffee shop or on your kitchen counter (Abu Mettleq and Abu-Naser, 2019). Naturally, as the demand for coffee rises, the farmers feel the opportunity to increase their production and get higher incomes. Sadly, this leads to rather self-interest-focused practices. In pursuit of a higher yield, plants of all sorts are being destroyed, as the coffee growing under the sun gives 3 times more produce than coffee growing under the shade (Varcho, 2015). The quick and easy way to increase one's production is to purge the other plants not only on one's farm but also to move deeper into the forests, warns Ross Hindle (2022). The forest is a common good, i.e., an area with no defined property rights which can be used by anyone. Its fate is thus the great example of the tragedy of the commons, which lies in a conflict between the common good and self-interest. Each and every individual farmer and cooperative of farmers has an incentive to increase their production as fast as possible to maximise their profits with little to no concern about the consequences.

Malicious practices lead to deforestation and soil erosion, which in turn backfires on the production of the coffee itself. The statistics show that for every cup consumed, a square inch of rainforest is destroyed (Lee, 2014), amounting to the average student of our university destroying approximately 1.6 square yards a month. Exacerbated, it leads to the speeding up of climate change and the decrease of biodiversity as a result of the loss of the natural habitat and the fall of moisture levels. All of this, you might have guessed, lowers the potential of the soil, hurting the community. In theory, we would expect the farmers to enter some sort of agreement on the practices they are to use to benefit all. At the end of the day, all have families to feed, and their children are likely to take on the farms, so the farmers should think in the long term, as they are increasingly dependent on the coffee crops. However, the current patterns of coffee demand are such that the incentive to deviate from the agreement would be pretty high. Imagine a group of farmers who agree to supply less to minimise the harmful impact on the soil. None has enough trust that another would not cheat, grow more and get higher profits. The stakes are high – the farmers are not always wealthy, they might have workers to pay wages, and they definitely need money to invest in their farms. As we might expect, the situation called prisoner's dilemma occurs – while in cooperation, all farmers would be better off, with no confidence in the sustenance of the agreement, they prefer to deviate, eventually hurting themselves.

The good news is that it absolutely does not have to be this way for you to enjoy your morning (or midnight) brew. In fact, coffee has the potential to be environmentally friendly if farmers are to change their practices. As Abu Mettleq and Abu-Naser (2019) reveal, coffee plants not only require years to bring yield but can also be harvested for decades! So, coffee can be sustainable, but sustainability can only be achieved through the reformed demand. We need to remember that we should not try to push the farmers to lower output with no guarantees; for them, it is the only source of income, and the economies of coffee-exporting countries rely greatly on coffee production. Instead, the best and only option which we, consumers, possess is signalling to the suppliers what we demand. Fairtrade certificates, with the international supervision of the farmers' practices, can provide farmers with financial stability, which they lack now. It can be done by imposing the base price level for coffee to ensure farmers are given decent pay to sustain themselves and their farms and do not have to resort to harmful methods. It is becoming more common practice - more responsible suppliers of your morning brew would be smaller local coffee shops, who self-congratulate themselves for sustainable practices. They are more likely to cooperate with farmers and care about the long-term sustainability of the coffee growth rather than a quick scaling up.

Think about that while enjoying your coffee and watch out for the fairtrade marks!

Bibliography:

Abu Mettleq, A. S., and Abu-Naser, S. S. (2019). ‘A Rule Based System for the Diagnosis of Coffee Diseases, International Journal of Academic Information Systems Research (IJAISR), 3 (3), pp 1-8.

Hindle, R. (2022). ‘Addressing deforestation in coffee production’, Perfect Daily Grind, 9 June.

Lee, J. (2014). ‘How Coffee Aids in Deforestation of Ourour Rainforests’, Going Green Today.

Tanner, W. (2019). ‘60% of wild coffee species are threatened with extinction’, BBC Wildlife, 24 January.

Varcho, A.L. (2015). ‘A Bitter Brew- Coffee Production, Deforestation, Soil Erosion and Water Contamination’, in Clark, K.A., et al. (eds.) Environmental ScienceBites. Columbus: The Ohio State University, pp. 37-44.