15 ms·
It's just a momentary trend. The vast amount of coffee waste in coffee producing countries is used for fertilizer. The title should be: In a few select farms th
by nathancahill 8y ago
It's just a momentary trend. The vast amount of coffee waste in coffee producing countries is used for fertilizer. The title should be: In a few select farms that produce cascara, it fetches a 480% premium over coffee.
Honestly, it's high price and "premium" perception only exist because so few farms are producing it. The tiny premium bottles of cascara you see would be replaced by gallon jugs for $2-3 if more farms started making it.
- peterwwillis 8y agoJust because it's a momentary trend now doesn't mean it's going to stop being a trend. If it proves successful, the farms using it for fertilizer will jump into the market to try to capitalize, which will bring the price down, but still bring in more income than just the coffee beans (and certainly more than feed)
- nathancahill 8y agoMy point is that it's not economically feasible at scale. There are mountains and mountains[0][1][2] of organic coffee pulp, the price would plummet once more farms produce it. The pulp isn't waste either, it's 100% reused as fertilizer. [0]: https://i.imgur.com/0a306pb.jpg https://i.imgur.com/0a306pb.jpg [1]: https://i.imgur.com/Duar7Uu.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Duar7Uu.jpg [2]: http://www.elfaroestate.com/img/large/coffeemill16.jpg http://www.elfaroestate.com/img/large/coffeemill16.jpg
- peterwwillis 8y agoWhere's the infeasibility exactly? Currently it's used as fertilizer. As long as they can sell it for higher than the price of new fertilizer, they will be making profit. So really the question is, how much are people willing to pay for it, or how can companies convince people they need to pay more for it? Arabica coffee is currently 2.962 USD per kilogram, and we pay double that for a cup of coffee using about 8 grams. We're paying 125x more for a cuppa than the cost of the beans. So it's certainly possible someone could come up with a way to make some small profit off the pulp. (Incidentally, tea is 0.0288 USD/kg, but obviously it weighs a lot less and we drink a lot less of it)
- Cerium 8y agoLooks like your price is off by a couple digits, I'm seeing about 2.90 USD per kg on World Bank commodities report.
- peterwwillis 8y agoI think you're right, the website I was looking at was off it seems
- _JamesA_ 8y agoIs that a wholesale price for tea? As someone trying to drink more tea I find the retail price for Lipton loose tea is about $21 USD per kilogram and other brands are considerably more expensive.
- peterwwillis 8y agoIt's the world bank commodities trading price. It gets a healthy markup by the time it reaches consumers.
- emodendroket 8y agoIt is a rather drastically simplified picture to talk about "tea" as one big undifferentiated product rather than an entire class of goods with wildly varying qualities and prices (then again I suppose that's also true of coffee to some extent, but I know less about it).
- emodendroket 8y agoIf you're trying to drink more tea, I might recommend at least getting Twinings or something. Lipton tea is one of those things I wouldn't really ever choose for myself.
- blanderman 8y agoI enjoy finding something fair trade from a local shop. It's generally better quality also, if slightly more expensive per month.
- 1123581321 8y agoThe price shouldn’t plummet any lower than the price it sells for fertilizer. Farmers would benefit from having more demand for byproducts.
- kazinator 8y ago> more income than just If stated that way, it true of any nonzero income from these husks, for which it is still feasible to ship them. What's questionable is whether it will continue to be valued above the bean. It's certainly not more rare than the bean: each bean produces a husk. It's artificially rare because the supply chain hasn't fully fired up. Basically the situation is an impulse response blip at the boundary condition: sudden appearance of a demand without a supply mechanism. It doesn't seem like it would take much for the coffee producers to save the husks, bag them, and ship them off the same way as beans. Once everyone is doing that, it's unlikely to remain valued above the bean. Since fertilizer is necesasry, this stuff has to be worth more than whatever fertilizer has to be used to replace it. If not, then it is the fertilizer.
- seattle_spring 8y agoSo I can't sell my coffee grounds for $75 / pound?
- seszett 8y agoThe article isn't talking about coffee grounds though, but about the fruit that is produced by coffee plants around the seeds. I have tasted it, fresh from coffee plants, and wondered why it was just discarded and not eaten as a fruit, sold, juiced or whatever, because it's juicy and sweet.
- Leynos 8y agoI'm sure I've had jam made from it before, but I've never been able to find it again. Nothing useful comes up from searching for "coffee cherry jam" or "cascara jam" (or similar).
- jerrysievert 8y agoI tend to prefer natural process coffees, where the beans are dried without the fruit being removed, which gives the coffee more of a fruit taste. I wonder how the price of natural process coffee will change due to this.
- ereyes01 8y agoYeah, I roast at home and I get the most delicious natural process Ethiopian Sidama beans at like $5/pound. It would really be a bummer if those suddenly skyrocketed in price and became harder to obtain...