Honestly, it's high price and "premium" perception only exist because so few farms are producing it. The tiny premium bottles of cascara you see would be replaced by gallon jugs for $2-3 if more farms started making it.
[0]: https://i.imgur.com/0a306pb.jpg
Arabica coffee is currently 2.962 USD per kilogram, and we pay double that for a cup of coffee using about 8 grams. We're paying 125x more for a cuppa than the cost of the beans. So it's certainly possible someone could come up with a way to make some small profit off the pulp. (Incidentally, tea is 0.0288 USD/kg, but obviously it weighs a lot less and we drink a lot less of it)
As someone trying to drink more tea I find the retail price for Lipton loose tea is about $21 USD per kilogram and other brands are considerably more expensive.
That's why 3rd world prices are cheaper. They don't have most of that since they usually get the product directly from the producer.
I advice against Lipton: it's overpriced because it's a familiar brand even to people who aren't tea enthusiasts. I'd recommend going to tea stores where loose leaf tea is sold by the pound.
For packaged black tea, I can highly recommend the following two: at about $9/pound, they are an excellent bang for the buck for high quality loose leaf OPA (many grades[3] above Lipton teabags):
-Ahmad OPA [1]
-Zarrin OPA [2]
As a note, $21/kilo really not that much once you convert it to cups of tea. With green teas especially, since one can brew them several times. So the Lipton you're talking about isn't expensive per se, just for the grade you get (dust in teabags, FBOP loose).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Ahmad-Ceylon-OPA-Tea-Carton/dp/B00110...
[2] https://persianbasket.com/zarrin-pure-ceylon-special-opa
Brands maybe irrelevant, as I'm not in North America.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tea#Green_tea_by_country
Don't be scared going into a tea shop: the point of going there is to try teas before you buy them. A proper tea shop will let you sample the teas.
Start tasting from the cheapest ones, find the kind you like, and then try the more expensive versions of that kind until you no longer can taste the difference.
With loose leaf tea, just brew it to instructions (again, tea shops will provide timing/temperature for multiple infusions) - and you can see and taste the quality with your eyes. I've never experienced anything remotely close to "20% twigs and dust" even in store-bought cheapest loose leaf teas - anything that's not in teabags usually unwraps beautifully.
Of course, get a ceramic teapot if you don't already own one. For temperature control, if you don't want to get a kettle with a thermostat, add a splash of cold water to the kettle before brewing green teas: if the water is colder than necessary, green tea will take longer to brew, but usually will turn out OK, but overly hot water can make it taste badly/bitterly (black teas are brewed with boiling water).
If you know people from China or Taiwan, ask them! Not everyone there is a tea aficionado, but those who are will be a great source of information (..and possibly samples, especially if they get to travel there regularly). And in any case, best way to find out about tea is having tea with someone who knows a bit about it.
To my taste, one can rarely go wrong with a Taiwanese tea (the ones that make it to the US at least). High-mountain oolongs are my favorite kind of tea currently, but it's just one kind.
But the only way to get into tea - just like into anything - is try, try, try. If you need ratings/reviews, there is RateTea[1] - you can go to any Asian store, grab a can, and see if you can find the description (although that website can be a bit snobby at times).
I second the advice others have given (go to any Asian store, grab any middle-priced package). I've found some great tea that way (and if it doesn't taste good - try another one!). Also, I had good luck with using Google Translate / OCR apps to decipher the labels.
Where are you located?
https://worldoftea.org/is-chinese-tea-safe-to-drink/
If you don't like pan oxidized Chinese tea at all, try Formosa (Taiwan), Korean or Japanese steam oxidized tea: Sencha, Bancha. Speaking of twigs, there's also a variety of Japanese twig tea which actually tastes very good - it's called Kukicha. Theese tend to have a milder taste.
https://japanesegreenteashops.com/pages/japanese-tea-types
If you're located anywhere in the EU, I used to buy from Teegschwendner before a Demmers franchise was establised in my country.
It’s actually comical/criminal how expensive tea by the teabag is vs loose leaf.
There’s also some tea by the pound on Amazon, although not as great quality IMHO.
That price per kg is also not very reflective of what you pay for ok-good coffee if you are buying green beans from an importer. The current batch I have is sold to me from the importer who buys direct from the farmer.
I found them by chatting to a local coffee roaster and getting the name off them. It’s often written on the coffee sacks too.
I know it’s a different country but if you wanted advice, a friendly email to them might serve you well. They are a great company.
They sell by the kg to me and have often chatted about how they work. Road trips around various countries with a grinder and espresso machine - sounds fun.
Green microlots from Colombia and Honduras, available in the USA.
I haven't purchased from them and am not sure how the pricing compares to other producers but it's a cool project.
0: https://coffeefaq.com/many-ounces-shot-espresso/
1: https://www.seattlecoffeegear.com/learn/videos-home/ask-the-...
2: https://coffeefaq.com/just-how-much-ground-coffee-do-i-need-...
On coffee methods the standard is 1 gram coffee to 17 grams water, with some flexibility for brew strength preference.
The only places that use tradional ratios are old school Italian influenced shops, which are fewer and farther between.
If stated that way, it true of any nonzero income from these husks, for which it is still feasible to ship them.
What's questionable is whether it will continue to be valued above the bean.
It's certainly not more rare than the bean: each bean produces a husk.
It's artificially rare because the supply chain hasn't fully fired up.
Basically the situation is an impulse response blip at the boundary condition: sudden appearance of a demand without a supply mechanism.
It doesn't seem like it would take much for the coffee producers to save the husks, bag them, and ship them off the same way as beans. Once everyone is doing that, it's unlikely to remain valued above the bean.
Since fertilizer is necesasry, this stuff has to be worth more than whatever fertilizer has to be used to replace it. If not, then it is the fertilizer.
I have tasted it, fresh from coffee plants, and wondered why it was just discarded and not eaten as a fruit, sold, juiced or whatever, because it's juicy and sweet.
I wonder how the price of natural process coffee will change due to this.
Coffee roasting is a really fun hobby that has a surprising amount lore and detail. I highly recommend hanging around: https://www.home-barista.com/home-roasting/
^^ That forum has some really knowledgeable folks and lots of cool DIY projects to read about. Have fun!
Some years are better than others, coffee is a crop like any other that varies in quality. Some roasters stockpile beans from good crop years and are skilled at making a consistent product. When you buy your own greens and roast at home, flavors can vary quite a bit. Personally, I love the variability, and the adventure of trying new flavors and learning to roast different beans.
I know it's not, which is why I responded with "So I can't...".
If you just read the headline, you might assume it's referring to used coffee grounds.
A lot of Starbucks stores will give you grounds for free for use in your garden. I don't know if they recommend composting first or not. My guess is they don't care.
Used, composted grounds are definitely good. Used grounds add biological material to the soil as well and lots of people have good success with that from what I understand.
Wow, makes sense. I never stopped to ask why the plant produced caffeine in the first place.
Compost your grounds, they're great.