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Coffee grows best in outdoor elevated tropical climates. Similar to cacao, putting a roof over an entire hillside is simply not feasible for even the wealthiest
by simtel20 6y ago
Coffee grows best in outdoor elevated tropical climates. Similar to cacao, putting a roof over an entire hillside is simply not feasible for even the wealthiest farmers.
One of the foundations of most farming is that given a large are, you can just place the plants and care for the ground they're on, and handle pests that can be seen. That's manageable with lots of farm labor and with available building material. Building a glass louvre around every rural farm between the tropics of cancer and capricorn, replacing the wind and rain, etc is just not how rural third world farming works.
- MichaelZuo 6y agoWell that still sounds like a cost issue to be honest, worst case is that coffee becomes a luxury item again. Though practically as third world companies develop and greenhouses become cheaper it probably wouldn’t climb so high as to stop being sold by the major retailers, Costco, etc. Double or triple in price maybe.
- simtel20 6y agoUnfortunately "luxury" doesn't seem like the likely outcome here. Luxury items are created via artificial scarcity (e.g. diamonds) or just by high cost of expertise and goods (e.g. a luxury car). In order for food to become a luxury item, it needs to be a more costly variation on something which is more readily available. This allows for a constant demand, with a side business in exotic expensive extras. If coffee, globally, needed to be grown in greenhouses it would just become a novelty tree that school trips visited until the climate turned around and it became an economically viable crop again.