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.
Another week without any major Starbucks news? They’re slacking off. Here’s what else happened:
The commodity price of coffee has been increasing all year, and over the past few weeks arabica futures spiked to their highest level since 1977. The reasons are many, from climate breakdown to tariff threats to uncertainty over the EU’s deforestation legislation. What it means for coffee farmers—and whether prices will stay high long term—remains to be seen.
Nestlé and Keurig are both trying to capture the growing home cold coffee market, but it turns out that making cafe-quality iced coffee at home is harder than it looks.
How do you encourage consumers to ditch disposable cups? It’s something I have written about before, but now a team of researchers in Vancouver decided to use the prospect of winning free coffee to tempt college kids to bring their reusable cups. That’s right: a little light gambling might solve the single-use cup crisis.
Read more on all these stories—plus, how scientists in Costa Rica are exploring sustainable low-elevation coffee production in a heating world—over at Fresh Cup Magazine:
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)
