Another One Bites The Rust: On The Extinction of Coffee

Originally Published: 27 September 2020

The coffee crisis is brewing. And it could be existential.

On the 21st of September, a new digital clock unveiled in Manhattan's Union Square, displayed a countdown showing the time remaining before the depletion of the Earth's carbon budget. Unveiled at 1:30pm, the timer showed "7 years, 101 days, 17 hours, 29 minutes and 22 seconds" based on current emission rates.

Now picture a giant Chemex (for the muggles: the coffee brewing thingy that looks like an hourglass). Drops of freshly brewed, aromatic coffee are falling from the filter to the bottom of the Chemex. Imagine that the coffee grinds inside this filter are the last ones remaining on Earth. You don't know when the Chemex will fill up completely but you do know that the extinction of coffee is getting closer with the falling of every drop.

The US- "the world's second biggest emitter"- is looking to formally withdraw from the Paris Agreement by the end of this year. The delegates who assist with that sign-off should endeavour their coffee that morning. Along with the US' environmental obligations, they may well be signing off their morning brew.

Here's a small sized history lesson, no cream, with a spoonful of why you should be worried about your skinny-soy-pumpkin-whatever latte.

THE KINGDOM OF KANDY & DEVASTING EMILY

In 1815 the British overthrew the Kingdom of Kandy in Ceylon (present-day Sri Lanka).

While this name sounds like something out of a historical soap opera, the result of this invasion was almost as bloody. In his book 'Coffee: A Global History', historian Jonathan Morris describes how the British slaughtered elephants and destroyed forests to make space for coffee plantations. Many workers of Tamil origin imported from Madras in India either died on the laborious journey or from the backbreaking work they had to do on the plantations. While morality is a foreign language to capitalism, exploitation is the mother tongue so of course this venture thrived. Ceylon was amongst the world's third largest coffee producing regions.

You would have heard of Colombian coffee or Brazilian coffee but it's likely that you've never heard of coffee from Sri Lanka. That's because Ceylon's coffee glory was cut short by devastating Emily. Yes, she was as terrifying as she sounds. No, she was not a witch. 'Devastating Emily' was the name given to the wave of coffee leaf rust which wiped away Ceylon's coffee plantations, beginning in 1869. Coffee leaf rust is a type of disease caused by the hemileia vastatrix fungus. This stops 'coffee cherries' and with it, coffee beans from growing. It appears as yellow spots on green leaves and eventually dries up the leaf, leaving a rotten, skeletal looking structure. By the mid 1880s, the coffee rust outbreak got so out of hand that most of the plantations were wrecked with little hope of recovery. Ceylon's farmers stopped growing coffee and started growing tea instead. What a story to tell at that British tea party you've always wanted to be invited to.

At first, coffee leaf rust only haunted Asian and some African countries, while Latin America's coffee economy was booming. However, devasting Emily eventually found her way to Latin America. She even acquired a Spanish name, 'La Roya', meaning 'The Rust'. La Roya appears synonymous with the Black Death for many coffee farmers, whose entire livelihoods can be destroyed by this disease. The rust first appeared in Brazil in 1970 and in about twelve years, it had "spread to every major coffee-producing country in the Americas", according to an article by NPR. The article also says, "Coffee rust has no cure. Its impact can be reduced to an extent, but not eradicated."

Climate change plays an influential role in catalysing the spread of coffee rust. “Climate change is good", a Costa Rican farm owner - William Corrales Cruz - told TIME.

“If you sell rust.”

CLIMATE CHANGE

Most scientists and farmers agree that climate change is increasing the prevalence and spread of coffee rust (some disagree).

Climate change deniers heavily focus on the argument that low coffee prices and farmers being unable to continue crop production is a result of coffee over-production in countries such as Brazil and Vietnam. While this is one reason, it's not the entire picture. Brazilian farmers are already feeling the effects of climate change themselves. Even coffee rust, is a factor, amongst several others, including drought, deforestation, changing weather conditions, which could all contribute to the extinction of coffee. Hence, it's important to dedicate a focused study on its affect.

Referring to the coffee leaf rust, Mauricio Galindo - head of operations at the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) says: "The only way you can make sense of it is through climate change…The temperature has risen and this fungus can attack with a speed and aggression we have never seen." This shows how while climate change is not currently affecting coffee consumers in any drastic way, it's already having an impact on farmers who depend on the crop to survive. In an episode of Vox Atlas titled 'The global coffee crisis is coming', a coffee farmer in Colombia says: "Nowadays, coffee production is equivalent to losing money."

The economic impact of COVID-19 is yet to be fully realised. Coffee farmers were already experiencing the effects of climate change and coffee leaf rust on their crops; now they may be vulnerable to another crisis. An article by The Atlantic, articulately draws parallels between coronavirus and the concurrent coffee leaf rust crisis: "The pandemic of coffee rust is like the unfolding pandemic of the coronavirus in so many ways. There were warnings. There was a belief that the Americas would not suffer. There was a confidence that existing tools could manage the threat. But the deepest similarity may be that, as with the coronavirus, the burden of each disease falls hardest on those least able to afford it. For the coronavirus, that is city dwellers with little savings and no second home to flee to, reliant on mass transit to get to work to feed their family. For coffee rust, it is the farmers."

EXTINCTION

While coffee rust has historically appeared in different periodic patterns, climate change is resulting in its more frequent occurrence. This may not appear existential at first sight but when we look at its impact coupled with other factors, it's easier to recognise how your morning brew may not survive to wake up future generations.

"About half of the land around the world currently used to produce high-quality coffee could be unproductive by 2050, according to a recent study in the journal Climatic Change," says an article by TIME. Another article by New York Post says, "Arabica crops could decline by 85 per cent by 2080 with 60 per cent the land used for coffee farming wiped out by the end of the century." While there are over 100 coffee species, Arabica and Robusta are the ones we consume and both of them made it to the list of endangered species according to a research article called 'High extinction risk for wild coffee species and implications for coffee sector sustainability'.

Clearly, this research is concerning and with coffee leaf rust continuing to affect plantations alongside the cluster of other climate change induced chaos, we need to start internalising the Chemex analogy more because it could be a reality one day. As Antony Wild writes in his book 'Black Gold', "There are few climate-change denialists in the coffee world today."

Coffee is not extinct yet but we all have work to do. As the quote by late actress Helen Hayes goes, "If you rest, you rust."