A History of Coffee BONUS: Coffee’s Ticking Time Bomb
May 31, 2022
Scott Bentley, founder of Caffeine Magazine, Jools Walker, best-selling cycling author, and Stuart McCook, a coffee history professor, delve into the intriguing history of Sri Lankan coffee. They discuss it as a once-thriving industry, now facing ecological challenges. The countries of Ethiopia and Yemen are explored for their historical significance. The conversation touches on coffee leaf rust's devastating impact, the shifts in the global coffee market, and innovative solutions to revive Sri Lanka's coffee legacy, emphasizing the importance of biodiversity in farming.
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Rust Controlled — Until It Wasn't
- Coffee leaf rust persisted globally but was kept manageable by climate and chemical controls for years.
- Shifts like climate change and lapses in management can quickly revive rust epidemics in new regions.
Central America's Rust Devastation
- In 2007–08 coffee leaf rust resurged in Colombia and later devastated Central American farms.
- James Harper describes visiting El Salvador and seeing farms abandoned and overrun after Roya outbreaks.
Coffee Frontiers Are Not Permanent
- Coffee's presence in a region is temporal: frontiers begin and end due to ecological and economic forces.
- Specialty coffee environments are often the most fragile and at greatest risk from rust and climate pressures.
