As warming climate hammers coffee crops, this rare bean may someday be your brew
Earth's warming climate is causing problems for big coffee producers everywhere and some are looking to a rarely cultivated species that may stand up better to drought and heat.
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Is it possible to buy unroasted beans and grow my own trees from them?
Locally grown is not always the best for the environment. Eating California rice in California is worse for CO2 than Thai rice, because California rice needs more inputs. Same with growing tomatoes in a natural-gas heated greenhouse in cold climates vs. trucked in from where they grow in the field. Transportation is a very small part of the CO2 footprint of food.
Likely not. Consider the processing of the bean after harvest. Both wet and dry process are likely to make the bean unable to germinate. Furthermore, coffee plans must be growing in certain climates and elevations. Otherwise, other countries would have gotten into coffee looooong ago.
A few years ago in my home town (UK), some people were arrested for making cocaine in their bathroom, by recreating the climate of south America in their bathroom.
It would be wildly impractical and very silly, but also a great experiment, to set up a coffee plant in your home, simulating the humidity, temperature, light and air pressure of high-altitude rainforests, just to have your own sustainable coffee.
If locally sourced and sustainable are your goal, there are some amazing mushroom coffee alternatives that do taste like coffee, one of my local coffee shops offers it. But I also understand the tempting voice in our heads that makes us want to do it the hard way, and get the correct product from a 100% self sustained route.
Unsustainably sustainable.
Maybe if I didn’t have a million other projects..