Wake up and smell the coffee ... made in the United States
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[September 22, 2021] By
Marcelo Teixeira
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Farmer David Armstrong
recently finished planting what is likely the most challenging crop his
family has ever cultivated since his ancestors started farming in 1865 -
20,000 coffee trees.
Except Armstrong is not in the tropics of Central America - he is in
Ventura, California, just 60 miles (97 km) away from downtown Los
Angeles.
"I guess now I can say I am a coffee farmer!" he said, after planting
the last seedlings of high-quality varieties of arabica coffee long
cultivated in sweltering equatorial climates.
Coffee is largely produced in the Coffee Belt, located between the
Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn, where countries such as
Brazil, Colombia, Ethiopia and Vietnam have provided the best climate
for coffee trees, which need constant heat to survive.
Climate change is altering temperatures around the globe. That is
harming crops in numerous locales, but opening up possibilities in other
regions. That includes California and Florida, where farmers and
researchers are looking at growing coffee.
Armstrong recently joined a group of farmers taking part in the
largest-ever coffee growing endeavor in the United States. The nation is
the world's largest consumer of the beverage but produces just 0.01% of
the global coffee crop - and that was all in Hawaii, one of only two
U.S. states with a tropical climate, along with southern Florida.
Traditional producers of coffee such as Colombia, Brazil and Vietnam
have suffered from the impact of extreme heat and changing rain
patterns. Botanists and researchers are looking to plant hardier crop
varieties for some of those nations' coffee growing regions.
Top producer Brazil is going through the worst drought in over 90 years
https://www.reuters.com/business/
environment/brazil-drought-alert-country-faces-worst-dry-spell-91-years-2021-05-28.
That was compounded by a series of unexpected frosts, which damaged
about 10% of the trees, hurting coffee production this year and next.
CALIFORNIA DREAMIN'
"We are getting to 100,000 trees," said Jay Ruskey, founder and chief
executive of Frinj Coffee, a company that offers farmers interested in
coffee growing a partnership package including seedlings, post-harvest
processing and marketing.
Ruskey says he started trial planting of coffee in California many years
ago but told few about it. He said he only "came out of the closet as a
coffee farmer" in 2014, when Coffee Review, a publication that evaluates
the best coffees every crop year, reviewed his coffee, giving his batch
of caturra arabica coffee a score of 91 points out of 100.
Frinj is still a small coffee company targeting high-end specialty
buyers. Frinj sells bags of 5 ounces (140 grams) for $80 each on its
website. As a comparison, 8-ounce packages of Starbucks Reserve, the
top-quality coffee sold by the U.S. chain, sell for $35 each. Frinj
produced 2,000 pounds (907 kg) of dry coffee this year from eight farms.
"We are still young, still growing in terms of farms, post-harvest
capabilities," said Ruskey. "We are trying to keep the price high, and
we are selling everything we produce." The venture is already
profitable," he said.
The company has been growing slowly since, with Armstrong's 7,000-acre
(2,833-hectare) Smith Hobson Ranch one of the latest, and largest, to
partner with Ruskey.
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Xiaolei Guo utilises artificial intelligence image analysis software
to examine greenhouse coffee tree roots in this picture obtained by
Reuters on September 20, 2021. UF/IFAS photo by Tyler Jones/Handout
via REUTERS
"I have no experience in coffee," said Armstrong, who typically grows citrus
fruits and avocados, among other crops.
To boost his chances of success, he installed a new irrigation system to
increase water use efficiency and has planted the trees away from parts of the
ranch that have been hit by frosts in the past.
Coffee uses 20% less water than most fruit and nut trees, according to the
United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. Water has become scarce in
California after recent droughts and forest fires. Many farmers are switching
crops to deal with limits on water use.
Giacomo Celi, sustainability director at Mercon Coffee Group, one of the world's
largest traders of green coffee, said the risks of cultivating coffee in new
areas are high.
"It seems more logical to invest in new coffee varieties that could be grown in
the same current geographies," he said.
FLORIDA HOPES
As the climate warms in the southern United States, researchers at the
University of Florida (UF) are working with a pilot plantation to see if trees
will survive in that state.
Scientists have just moved seedlings of arabica coffee trees grown in a
greenhouse to the open, where they will be exposed to the elements, creating the
risk that plants could be killed by the cold when the winter comes.
"It is going to be the first time they will be tested," said Diane Rowland, a
lead researcher on the project.
Rowland said researchers are planting coffee trees close to citrus, an
intercropping technique used in other parts of the world as larger trees help
hold winds and provide shade to coffee trees.
The project, however, is about more than just coffee cultivation. Alina Zare, an
artificial intelligence researcher at UF's College of Engineering, said
scientists are also trying to improve how to study plants' root systems. That,
in turn, could help in the selection of optimal coffee varieties for the region
in the future.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S.
weather agency, annual mean temperatures were at least 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1
degrees Celsius) above average for more than half the time in the long-term
measuring stations across the United States' southeastern region in 2020.
Florida experienced record heat last year, with average temperatures of 28.3 C
(83 F) in July, and 16.4 C (61.6 F) in January. That is hotter than Brazil's
Varginha area in Minas Gerais state, the largest coffee-producing region in the
world, which averages 22.1 C (71.8 F) in its hottest month and 16.6 C (61.9 F)
in the coldest.
"With climate change, we know many areas in the world will have difficulties
growing coffee because it is going to be too hot, so Florida could be an
option," Rowland said.
(Reporting by Marcelo Teixeira in New York; Editing by David Gaffen and Matthew
Lewis)
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