Jacob Mammen, managing director of India's Badra Estates coffee growers:
“..you have a sense of insecurity. Things are slipping out of your hands.”
In an interview in "Coffee farmers adjust to climate struggle" Seattle Times
Hat tip to Climate Progress blog
Indian coffee growers are not alone in facing unstable climate conditions.
Coffee growers in Colombia have an amazing array of coffee varieties to offer, based on subtle differences in altitude, climate and soils. Yet in recent memory, many Colombian coffee groves were hit with exceptional rains, damaging crops.
According to Mark Pendergast, coffee isn't really the second most valuable commodity after oil, but in 2006 coffee was the fourth most valuable legal agricultural commodity. That said, many of us are deeply attached to coffee, so on the scale of emotional reactions, scarcity of coffee is right up there with scarcity of petroleum, wheat, sugar.
We've been attached to coffee for generations. William Penn, the wealthy founder of the province of Pennsylvania, once sent a pound of coffee as a present to his wife in England.
I have said before that it may take a coffee shortage to move Congress to act.
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