Coffee’s Other Ingredient and Why It Matters

Coffee is a golden bean that awakens drinkers and economies around the world. However, like all good things, its production comes at a cost much more profound, and lasting, than the depths of our pocketbooks.

We all love coffee. Even if you don’t drink it, I’m sure you’re well aware of its power to make your friends and foes easier to deal with in the mornings. Additionally, coffee is the second most valuable primary commodity in the world that is exported from emerging markets. Being the 2^nd most valuable primary commodity is no joke; over 2.25 billion cups of coffee are consumed in the world each day and more than 100 million people depend on it for a living. That’s a lot of coffee!

That also means a lot of water. Coffee is a great economy with an even greater demand for water. As freshwater becomes more threatened in today’s world, it is important to think about the role coffee plays in the consumption of water.

Much of the world has been humbled by the increasing scarcity of this essential resource. It should be no news in the Western United States that water has been taken for granted for too long and the critical conversation of how water is valued in many 1^st world societies must soon be held.

To understand what has been happening behind the scenes with coffee and water, you have to start from the beginning—at the farm

A farmer in a Peruvian farm picking caturra beans. This is the wife of Jose Jorge, a farmer that works closely with Reach Trade.

On the production side of things, many miles away from your neighborhood café, millions of farmers are hard at work: approximately 25 million of them. Like other farmers, the majority of coffee farmers have succumbed to the “work-hard, paid-less” way of life. The work (somewhat) pays off when there are good yields or good prices and perhaps, in a blue moon, both of these conditions coincide. Typically, farmers make due with the cards they’re dealt. One thing that many coffee farmers are not given, however, is access water.

I work with coffee in the central highlands of Peru. Our farmers receive plenty of rain and are blessed with ample access to freshwater throughout the year. After all, our region is part of the Greater Amazonian Basin, which represents 20 percent of the world’s freshwater.

Not only is it vital for the growth of the coffee plant, water also plays an important role for the processing of coffee in the coffee lands—from ‘seed to sack’. Coffee is actually a fruit that looks like a pitted cherry on a bushel, where the ‘pit’ is what we seek to process, roast, and brew into our daily morning elixir. The processing of coffee itself demands several intricate processes ranging from quality assessment, de-pulping, aerobic and anaerobic fermentation, mucilage removal, washing, sorting, and drying. Although several techniques require no water input at all for processing, many of these processes demand varying amounts of water. In the latter process especially, many producers, large and small, mismanage their use of water in various ways.

Coffee can be grown, harvested, and processed using a myriad of techniques, all impacting how much or little water is used

When thinking about coffee processing and its relative water consumption, there is a range from what we call natural or dry processing to washed or wet processing with several hybrid techniques in between. Natural coffees use minimal amounts of water if none at all and washed coffees demand varying amounts of water. For washed process, which is widely used in Peru, an average of 20 liters of freshwater is allocated per 1 kg of processed coffee (Wintgens 2012). We have worked with farmers who were once using up to 100 liters of freshwater per 1 kg of coffee! Now that’s a lot of water…

With steady access to freshwater, washed or partially-washed coffees are considered to be more efficient and productive systems for coffee processing since coffee can be more quickly processed and separated from by-products like the pulp and mucilage lining the seed. However, with water as an important variable for coffee processing, you could clearly imagine how water consumption rates can become a problem for medium to large-sized farms that process a lot of coffee, or for smaller farmers who have little access to water on their land. We personally see water scarcity issues vary from farm to farm in Peru.

The nitty-gritty of coffee processing: byproducts and what that means for coffee communities

However, there’s an even greater problem behind much of the world’s coffee processing: water contamination from processing. The byproducts that are removed during washed processing contain many components that are extremely harmful to the environment, including: excessive caffeine, tannins, polyphenols, and caffeic and chlorogenic acids that seep into soils and leach into freshwater tributaries. As a result, the farmer experiences a degraded quality of soil and water and the greater ecosystem is compromised. Coffeeland communities become even more vulnerable to water-borne diseases and a farmer’s land becomes more susceptible to poor yields and quality, unfavorable conditions induced by climate change, and devastating crop disease (Wintgens 2012).

There are technologies to better manage water on the farm. Some of these include innovative techniques to reduce water consumption and, at times, even eliminate water contamination all together by treating coffee’s byproducts and residual water used for processing. However, any technology comes with a price, which makes the mission of reducing coffee’s ecological footprint a formidable challenge for even the most eco-conscious farmer.

The majority of the world’s coffee farmers fit into a category of economic dependency on coffee. In Peru, we work with communities where the majority of farmers remain in cyclical debt due to coffee farming. In these cases, premium prices for fair trade, organic, Rainforest Alliance, or specialty microlot coffees just aren’t enough to compensate the farmer for their production. Whether the farmer is aware of coffee’s impact on water or not, it becomes an uphill battle for the majority of farmers to invest in changes when “all-in” on coffee production. It goes without saying that a farmer is concerned about his land and livelihood; in many cases, this is all a coffee farmer has. It is a reality, however, that many farmers need assistance to afford long-term planning and security, especially with something as fundamental as water conservation.

Looking past the coffee cup to the bigger picture

This is an issue that must be addressed by the coffee industry and beyond. Just as in petroleum and in other significant world market commodities, coffee employs an astronomical amount of land, water, and labor. The sustainability of coffee’s back-end capital is vital for a healthy, 21^st century Planet Earth, and understanding water’s place in it all is paramount for the change we need.

And beyond coffee? By capitalizing on the existing market-based interest for doing a better job with coffee’s impact, those who take action now would generate the much-needed proof that change is not just possible but profitable for humanity and the ecosystems upon which we depend. With the jumpstart in capital, we will find greater opportunity in measuring-and valuing our human impact on water—a true and blue footprint.

Read more

Wintgens, Jean Nicolas. Coffee: Growing, Processing, Sustainable Production, 2^nd Edition. Wiley-VCH, 2011.