Coffee Goes Metric

How To Save Coffee: Lessons From the Degrowth Movement

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.

Dubai’s Chocolate-Based Propaganda Push

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.

There's a lot of bad stuff going on in the world, so why not take a break with some extremely niche coffee industry news! Featuring a relatively unremarkable change to the benchmark coffee futures market's system of measurement. Exciting.

Here's a summary of what went on last week:

Despite most not using it directly, the price of coffee on the commodity futures market (known as the "C price") remains a benchmark for the specialty industry. However, we're going to have to start doing some maths because the exchange is going metric: The company that runs the C market is switching from U.S. cents-per-pound to U.S. dollars-per-metric-ton.
After a futile and violent (and U.S.-backed) decades-long war on drugs, Colombia's leftist president is attempting a more conciliatory approach. One idea is a pilot program that pays farmers to replace their coca plants, the raw material for cocaine, with alternatives crops like coffee. Will it work? Many rural areas are controlled by armed groups who pressure farmers into growing coca, although farmers can also earn a lot more from coca than from coffee.
A study from Harvard found that drinking coffee into middle age was linked to healthier ageing among women. The research, which analysed dietary data from more than 47,000 participants over 30 years, found a correlation between those who drank coffee between the ages of 45-60 and better health outcomes. The study garnered a lot of press coverage—the New York Times, CNN, Fox, People, Sky News, Newsweek, and so many more—despite it not actually having been published or peer reviewed yet.

For more on all these stories—plus some good unionising news—check out the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

Speaking of often fairly spurious coffee news generating a ton of press coverage, I wrote about that. Specifically, this piece explores the interplay of motivations that cause things like stunt job postings and novel coffee products to generate headlines and clicks, and who benefits from such coverage: