Organic, Carbon-Free Holiday Coffee Cheaper Than Starbucks

Why buy coffee grown with pesticides, herbicides, and chemical fertilizers when you can get organic, fair trade, shade-grown, carbon offset coffee for less money?

I was driving home from Thanksgiving when I stopped at a service area off I-95 in Maryland for coffee. Starbucks gives you a free cup of drip coffee with the purchase of a pound of coffee beans & I was nearly out of coffee at home, so I grabbed a bag of Christmas Blend without looking at the price. As the cashier handed my reusable mug back over the counter, I gulped at the price - $16 (with the suggested retail price of $15 covered by a $16 price tag - I guess the service area gouge).

When I got home, I figured it was past time for me to restock my cabinet with coffee from Grounds for Change. Turns out their Holiday Blend is only $13.95 a pound. Yes, shipping is extra, but if you order 5 pounds, including shipping it's just $12.78 a pound.

Not only does Grounds for Change work to reduce or offset its impact at each step of the coffee growing and production process, it's extremely delicious. While I haven't tried the Holiday yet, I know their Sumatra has a great taste without being over-roasted like Starbucks, which can be “burnt and bitter enough to make your eyes water instead of open" as Consumer Reports memorably put it.

Buzzkill: Does Climate Crisis Mean We've Hit "Peak Coffee"?

Lots of stories in the news today about skyrocketing coffee prices. As with oil, commodity speculators share some of the blame for pushing up prices. But coffee production has been devastated by extreme weather linked to global warming:

But in the last few years, coffee yields have plummeted here and in many of Latin America’s other premier coffee regions as a result of rising temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rains, phenomena that many scientists link partly to global warming.

Coffee plants require the right mix of temperature, rainfall and spells of dryness for beans to ripen properly and maintain their taste. Coffee pests thrive in the warmer, wetter weather.

Bean production at the Garzóns’ farm is therefore down 70 percent from five years ago, leaving the family little money for clothing for toddlers and “thinking twice” about sending older children to college, said Mr. Garzon’s 44-year-old son, Albeiro, interviewed in a yellow stucco house decorated with coffee posters and madonnas.

The shortage of high-end Arabica coffee beans is also being felt in New York supermarkets and Paris cafes, as customers blink at escalating prices. Purveyors fear that the Arabica coffee supply from Colombia may never rebound — that the world might, in effect, hit “peak coffee.” [...]

“Coffee production is under threat from global warming, and the outlook for Arabica in particular is not good,” said Peter Baker, a coffee specialist with CABI, a research group in Britain that focuses on agriculture and the environment, noting that climate changes, including heavy rains and droughts, have harmed crops across many parts of Central and South America.

And it hasn't gotten any better since this New York Times piece was written in March - last month, torrential rains triggered landslides in Brazil.