Most Americans don’t think twice about leaving half a glass of water on the table as they leave a restaurant. It’s only when we pay for it that we tend to leave no drop behind. Cost drives alcohol decisions too — ditch the cheap beer to beat traffic home but finish a $20 pour even if it’s made poorly.
Now it seems we’ll be playing this game with coffee. Rising temperatures, prolonged summers and droughts — courtesy of climate change — have crippled crop production in many of the world’s top coffee-producing nations. From there, you know the drill — high demand, low supply, higher costs.
Doesn’t really matter what your politics are, record heat has had an undeniable impact on agriculture and the global supply chain. Vietnam, for example, produces most of the beans used for espresso and instant coffee in the world. This year, farmers spent parts of what is normally Vietnam’s rainy season trying to save their crops from the worst drought in a decade.
UNICEF reported that several provinces declared a state of emergency due to the lack of rainfall and saltwater intrusion into the freshwater Mekong Delta. Rice fields were lost; fish and shrimp died; and tons of robusta coffee beans were rendered unsalvageable, leading to a near 50-year high in price according to the International Coffee Organization. Coffee consumers paid for those lost beans — as well as arabica beans similarly lost in Brazil — with their cups each morning via price hikes.
And by coffee c.