Unfortunately I don’t feel much better educated than before I read the article. My main approach currently is that it has to be fair trade and be wary of anything that is designed to sound like...
Unfortunately I don’t feel much better educated than before I read the article. My main approach currently is that it has to be fair trade and be wary of anything that is designed to sound like fair trade without actually saying it. Obviously that comes with a price, but like that meme that goes around says: if we can’t have coffee and chocolate without slavery then maybe we shouldn’t have it at all. Looks like climate change might resolve that quandary anyway.
My Aunt runs a small coffee roaster which focuses running as ethically as possible. She’ll be the first to say that determining what is really happening along your supply chain is difficult, with some organisations literally set up to obfuscate it. A fact I think big roasters are prepared to leverage.
From what I can find, one coffee tree at maturity, produced about 1lb of roasted beans per year. Depending on how you brew, you're likely consuming (at 1.5 cups per day) about 1.5+ lbs of coffee...
From what I can find, one coffee tree at maturity, produced about 1lb of roasted beans per year. Depending on how you brew, you're likely consuming (at 1.5 cups per day) about 1.5+ lbs of coffee per month (25 double shots of espresso, 30 10oz cups of drip, 17 10oz cups of French press, etc) and extrapolate that out further. Coffee trees take about 4 years to begin bearing fruit and need 6 foot of clearance between each tree.
I bet you could probably get a pretty decent yield from 30sf of greenhouse space. If you have good climate control you may even be able to grow year round
I bet you could probably get a pretty decent yield from 30sf of greenhouse space. If you have good climate control you may even be able to grow year round
Unfortunately I don’t feel much better educated than before I read the article. My main approach currently is that it has to be fair trade and be wary of anything that is designed to sound like fair trade without actually saying it. Obviously that comes with a price, but like that meme that goes around says: if we can’t have coffee and chocolate without slavery then maybe we shouldn’t have it at all. Looks like climate change might resolve that quandary anyway.
My Aunt runs a small coffee roaster which focuses running as ethically as possible. She’ll be the first to say that determining what is really happening along your supply chain is difficult, with some organisations literally set up to obfuscate it. A fact I think big roasters are prepared to leverage.
I wish it was feasible to grow your own coffee plants in a greenhouse, I feel like that'd be a lot of fun and a good way to ensure no ethical issues.
Makes me wonder how many coffee plants I’d need to meet my annual needs. Maybe 1.5 cups of coffee per day on average.
From what I can find, one coffee tree at maturity, produced about 1lb of roasted beans per year. Depending on how you brew, you're likely consuming (at 1.5 cups per day) about 1.5+ lbs of coffee per month (25 double shots of espresso, 30 10oz cups of drip, 17 10oz cups of French press, etc) and extrapolate that out further. Coffee trees take about 4 years to begin bearing fruit and need 6 foot of clearance between each tree.
I bet you could probably get a pretty decent yield from 30sf of greenhouse space. If you have good climate control you may even be able to grow year round