Coffee is increasingly at risk from the climate crisis, and corporate-driven incremental change won’t save it. The theory of degrowth offers hope for a better world and a fairer coffee industry.
For paid subscribers: Coffee is increasingly used to burnish the United Arab Emirates’ international image. Now it is being supercharged by merging with the popularity of the Dubai chocolate trend.
The coffee berry borer is a destructive pest, causing half a billion dollars worth of damage to farms annually. They're also tiny and hard to spot, which makes counteracting the pesky critters difficult and expensive—but that's where drones come in. Researchers in Australia have developed a software system that uses drones and advanced image processing to detect the insects' impact, allowing farmers to remove infestations and save their harvests.
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a civil rights lawsuit against a Palestinian-owned coffee shop in Oakland, California, alleging that the owner and staff discriminated against Jewish customers on multiple occasions. In a statement to Daily Coffee News, a lawyer for the cafe's owner called the lawsuit "a political stunt designed to intimidate people who oppose Israel’s genocide and our government’s support of it."
You know when you drink coffee too late in the day and it stops you sleeping? Of course you do. Well, researchers in Canada studied this phenomenon, and found that caffeine pushes our brains into "criticality", a state of optimum functionality that keeps us alert and reactive. However, our brains use sleep to rest and recover, which caffeine interferes with. "These changes suggest that even during sleep, the brain remains in a more activated, less restorative state under the influence of caffeine," said study co-author Karim Jerbi.
For more on all these stories, plus why Starbucks is finally getting involved in China's coffee price wars, check out the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:
On Friday, paid subscribers received their latest bonus article, which looked at why health studies in particular are so popular with news organisations:
I'm a coffee writer and creator of The Pourover. Based in Scotland, I have over a decade of experience in the specialty coffee industry. Ask me about coffeewashing. It's pronounced Fin (he/him)
Fionn Pooler
Fionn Pooler
