Coffee in Crisis | Hacker News Reader

Coffee in Crisis

bbc.com

49 pointsthomersch_48 comments

It's strange that an article about the potential scarcity of Arabica doesn't once mention the country where most Arabica is grown: Brazil. Not only that, the expectations have been improving because of improved conditions this year: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-21/coffee-dec...

It does seem like the article may have conveniently evaded that news. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a looming threat to the coffee supply.

The fact that Brazil may have an exceptionally good year, only means that it is likely to have a less-exceptional year after that, due to regression to the mean. If the climate does start to negatively impact the more tertiary coffee growing regions, Brazil will not be able to bolster the entire coffee demand.

Also: I can only assume that growing overall population = higher demand for coffee

> The fact that Brazil may have an exceptionally good year, only means that it is likely to have a less-exceptional year after that, due to regression to the mean.

Isn't that a Monte Carlo fallacy? One outcome in a sequence of tests does not mean that others are more likely in the future. If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, your likelihood of getting a tails on the next flip (assuming a perfectly-balanced coin) is still 50%. Brazil's good year may be another case of climate change for all we know, and could very well persist for awhile; or, you might be right and next year things will balance out again. We don't know either way yet.

That isn't to say that we shouldn't be concerned regardless; you're correct in your observation that having all our figurative, coffee-flavored eggs in one basket - even if that basket is the size of Brazil - is rarely a good idea.

Yeah, you're right, we certainly won't know until hindsight shows up.

> "One outcome in a sequence of tests does not mean that others are more likely in the future. If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, your likelihood of getting a tails on the next flip (assuming a perfectly-balanced coin) is still 50%"

True, but I am arguing that out of 10 flips, the average number of heads will likely be 50%. If you got 10 heads in a row, that would be 100%, an exceptional event, possibly like Brazil's good year. However, if you were to flip 10 more coins, it is much more likely that you will get less than 100% heads flips, as it will regress closer to the mean of 50%.

I guess the main point I was arguing is that just because Brazil might have a good outlook in the future, does not mean the article is invalid and too presumptuous.

> If you flip a coin and get 10 heads in a row, your likelihood of getting a tails on the next flip (assuming a perfectly-balanced coin) is still 50%.

If you flip a FAIR coin, your odds are still 50%. If I flip a coin and get heads 10 times in a row, I'm betting heads for that 11th flip.

Yeah, sure, but also the bookie will give you crappy odds on that bet! :)

Aight, you got me there :)

Is it not possible to grow coffee plants using vertical farming? It sound ideas like this => http://cargocollective.com/dellabosca/Vertical-Coffee-Farm are going to need to become a reality in the future if we can't stop climate change, where it can protect the plants from heavy rainfalls and allow farmers to control their growth.

Coffee has been traditionally grown within a forest containing both native flora as well as other productive species (cacao, banana, vanilla, etc.) that grow well under taller trees. So in a sense coffee _requires_ vertical farming, except that the vertical space is only occupied by coffee plants at one place. John Vandermeer of U. of Michigan has been studying coffee cultivation as a primary example of food forest, and has been pointing out the negative effects of full sun (and yes, full rain) intensive coffee cultivation on the resilience of the production system. I am surprised that the article does not mention these aspects of coffee.

A challenge would be that coffee trees have very deep roots [1].

[1] http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/ad219e/AD219E05.htm

So we build deeper farm levels.

Even more conventional greenhouses, however, should help somewhat. I reckon the point of the parent commenter is less about the vertical nature of such farms and more about the climate controllability of such farms.

At the same time, demand for coffee is growing rapidly, especially since more traditionally tea-drinking nations are making the switch to coffee.[1] Maybe if coffee prices increase significantly we'll see more milk-tea places opening up and Starbucks incorporating more of its Teavana products at its stores.

[1] http://time.com/3711436/global-coffee-increase/

This page made my laptop scream. It never stopped trying to load something. I run ABP, perhaps that's the "fault?"

I also tried to find a sensible place to point that out to the BBC, but nothing was obviously (to me) the right place.

Forget trying to report technical faults to the BBC, every road leads to obfuscation, misdirection and frustration. They don't provide support for anything or anyone. This includes TV License payers. They even discontinued what little real time interaction they had with viewers when they abandoned the iPlayer forums a few years back.

Even if you do manage to report "something", it takes them weeks to respond, if at all.

I rarely consume BBC products and services these days, and after the Scottish Independence referendum I no longer trust them as a competent news source. They're a bit of a running joke to many folks in Scotland, especially news and affairs output from Pacific Quay (BBC Scotland) [0][1].

0: http://www.bbc.scotlandshire.co.uk/

1: http://newsnet.scot/citizen/

You could try using Ghostery (https://www.ghostery.com/en/.) For me the page loads slower than most, but not problematically so.

Seems to work fine on my MBP. I'm just annoyed by the dumb parallax scrolling which covers up the title when you're trying to read it. Parallax was cool on Amigas in the 80s, but today in web pages it's just flashy and annoying.

No issues here in Firefox. I even disabled uBlock Origin and didn't notice any issue. Not about to allow flash, though...

I wish every HN link had a separate comments section where people bitch about the page the news was served on.

Without JS enabled on FF39, it looks like a nice WAP-era mobile page.

I'm not running any ad blocking, and had a similar experience.

Isn't there a way to produce synthetic caffeine?

I mean, there's been a shift recently for nicotine and the market for e-cigs, I'm sure we can somehow find a way to do the same for caffeine.

You know, some people drink coffee because they like the flavour, not because they need caffeine :P (As a matter of fact, I consider caffeine to be an undesirable side-effect of delicious coffee...)

Coffee isn't the only natural source of caffeine, and yes, it can also be made synthetically.

It's especially unfortunate because decaf coffee is usually gross.

I've found decaf made with the Aeropress is actually surprisingly good. I usually only have a single cup of caffeinated and then follow up with a few cups of decaf.

Unsurprising when you look at the method they use for removing the caffeine.

Supercritical CO2 extraction is gross? The solvent evaporates without a trace.

And a lot of people love coffee but hate caffeine.

And some people, mysteriously, seem to be especially fond of the flavor just around the time they're struggling to wake up.

Try roasted okra seeds then.

Are we producing synthetic nicotine for e-cigs?

I am of the understanding that we currently produce liquid nicotine from tobacco leaves, and use the liquid nicotine for electronic cigarettes.

We certainly can already produce caffeine independently of producing coffee, and while that may be a major reason for coffee production, i doubt many coffee drinkers would be satiated with a caffeine pill every morning instead of their cup of coffee.

Kind of akin to seeing the wine grapes are going away and saying, well we can produce alcohol independently of wine - its true, but it wont satisfy wine lovers.

If we were to replace coffee beans, we wouldn't just offer them a No-Doze; I imagine you develop coffee flavors that could be used to reproduce the actual beverage. No reason for instant coffee to ever have been coffee beans in the first place if you can do the flavors right.

Or, the culture just adjusts to a different caffeine-infused hot drink.

Nicotine patch? I want a caffeine patch!

Honestly though, I'd be less upset about coffee going away as a source of caffeine than it going away as a drink. It's so wonderfully delicious that synthetic caffeine just wouldn't really cut it for me.

You're actually in luck: https://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/caffederm.shtml

To answer your question: yes, we already create synthetic caffeine. It's widely used in soda, energy drinks, etc.

From what I understand, a lot of this caffeine is sold to soda makers as a byproduct of the decaffeination process used on coffee beans.

Does this mean the end of soda as well?

> "But most of the caffeine used in soft drinks is actually synthetically produced in Chinese pharmaceutical plants."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/03/13/289750754/wak...

I'd love a good cola that has no caffiene. (Although I also don't want it to have sugar either.)

There's a niche in the market for somethig that tastes nice, is cold, isn't full of sugar and is not caffeinated.

Diet Rite is my cola of choice. No Caffeine, sweetened with sucralose instead of aspartame. They could use some help with their product packaging, it looks a lot like generic/store-brand soda :)

> There's a niche in the market for somethig that tastes nice, is cold, isn't full of sugar and is not caffeinated.

Ice water?

(and I'm saying this as a cola enthusiast)

Kola nut has caffeine, so a cola sort naturally does too.

(my point being more that marketers probably won't call what you are looking for cola, not the pedantry)

What do you mean by 'good cola'? Coca-Cola has caffeine free variants of both Diet Coke and Coke Zero. Up here in Canada you can usually find them at major supermarket chains. If by good you mean not Coca-Cola or Pepsi... well then ya, there probably aren't many choices.

How do you know the caffeine in soda and energy drinks is synthetic? Why not just use the leftover caffeine from decaffeination of coffee?

Synthetic is cheaper.

> "But most of the caffeine used in soft drinks is actually synthetically produced in Chinese pharmaceutical plants."

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2014/03/13/289750754/wak...

Coffee is much more than caffeine [1]

[1] http://www.ift.org/~/media/Knowledge%20Center/Publications/B...

Why would you do that though?

It's a funny thought for me as I only drink decaf.

> For one thing, we can expect coffee to become more of a luxury, with prices shooting up by around 25% by 2050 according to Bunn’s calculations

A 25% rise in price over 35 years qualifies as a crisis now?

In accordance with Betteridge's Law of Headlines[1] the answer is no.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...

I don't know how people do links and stuff on hacker news

Thanks for the link, haha. Sensationalist title.

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