Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/1483499
22 STiR coffee and tea | 2022 Issue 5 (October/November) G By Bethany Haye reat news: demand for top-quality coffee is on a roll in every region of the world. Not-so-great news: coffee production is diminishing, and places suit- able for cultivation will shrink drastically over the next three decades. Maybe good news: innovative solutions are in the works. But will remedies come in time to keep filling our K-cups? Coffee labeled as single origin, sustainable, or fair trade is no longer a niche market. Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy have been connoisseurs for years, and the expanding economies of eastern Europe are in love with specialty coffee culture. Asia's growing middle class also wants more and better coffee; the Asia-Pacific region's specialty cof- fee market is forecast to grow by 15.3% annually from 2022–2030, reaching a total value of $16.9 billion, according to Research and Markets. Third-wave coffee shops, importers, and roasters have taken off in the Middle East and in South Asia, with Dubai and India leading the charge. India's fast-growing Hatti Kaapi and Third Wave Coffee companies are aiming to open 500 new shops between them by 2023. In Dubai, the craze has gone from new coffee shops to coffee importing and roast- ing. The Dubai Multi Commodity Center (DMCC), which opened in November 2018, is able to process up to 20,000 metric tons of green coffee annually. DMCC says it aims to bring Dubai and the Middle East back to its long-ago predominance as a hub of coffee activity. Southeast Asia is also in trend. Indonesia's Janji Jiwa chain was included in Forbes Asia magazine's 2022 "100 To Watch" list of hot companies. The Kopi Kenangan chain, also from the archipelago, says it will open thousands of stores across Southeast Asia in the next few years. Singapore-based chains like Ratio and Flash Coffee are bet- The Promise and Perils of Our Coffee Future People everywhere keep wanting more and better coffee. But can our planet keep supplying it? Current suitability for coffee (aggregated climate, land, and soil suitability). A Central and South America, B West and Central Africa, C South, and Southeast Asia. Courtesy of Public Library of Science https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0261976.g001 ting on continuing high demand, invest- ing in expansion over the next five years. And in China, so is Coffee Box and many other companies. Then there's Korea, Ja- pan, Taiwan. In the United States, coffee con- sumption rose by 14% from January 2021 through January 2022, according to the National Coffee Association. Fifty percent of people in the U.S. — 150 mil- lion people — consume specialty coffee every day. So is this a great moment for coffee producers worldwide? Unfortunately, the consumption boom comes just when output is decreasing. Yes, world coffee production for 2022/23 is forecast to rebound by 7.8 million 60-kilogram bags from the previous year to reach 175.0 million bags, a rise of 4.7%. But even af- ter this slight year-on-year recovery, pro- duction will be 27% lower than the previ- ous high-yield year of 2020, according to Brazil's Conab coffee industry agency. An inconvenient climate We've all heard the dire warnings that a production shortfall will be inevitable as weather becomes more extreme. One of the first major studies, in 2014, by the Natural Resources Institute in the U.K. predicted a sharp drop in output in Latin America, Vietnam, and Africa. Of the three temperature-change scenarios studied, the least severe would see a 76% shrinkage of viable growing acreage in