No more flat whites? Australian coffee shops feel the effects of inflation. Plus, Ethiopia looks to China to boost coffee exports and forget pesticides\u2014to manage the coffee berry borer in Hawaii, just keep harvesting! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Demand for Ethiopian coffee is increasing in China, leading many Ethiopian exporters to focus on a new, encouraging, and expanding market.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n “Over the last 5 to 10 years, we are seeing growing demand for Ethiopian coffee in China and that has created one of the most promising coffee markets in the world,” said coffee exporter Abdullah Bagersh of S.A. Bagersh Private Limited Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China’s annual coffee consumption has grown by 15 percent over the past decade, compared to the international growth rate of 2.2 percent. Combined with the country’s deepening relationship<\/a> with the entire continent of Africa broadly, has made China a potentially lucrative market. “We participated in the second China-Africa Economic and Trade Expo last year,” said Jemal Abrar from Mullege Coffee Export in Ethiopia. “Since then, we have enjoyed growing market share in China and exploited new market opportunities.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Export volume from Ethiopia has increased in the last three years, making China the seventh-largest importer of Ethiopian coffee. The Ethiopian Coffee Association is working with the Chinese government and the Ethiopian Embassy in Beijing to help exporters “better exploit the Chinese market through online meetings and aggressive promotion.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2022, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Ethiopian Government worked together to launch<\/a> Ethiopian coffee on Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce platform. During the launch, the platform sold 11,200 bags of roasted Ethiopian coffee in one second.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Australia’s coffee industry is world-renowned and much-copied but hasn’t been immune from the effects of global inflation and the cost of living crisis. Rising overhead costs and shrinking disposable incomes have combined to squeeze profits and force many coffee shops out of business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Australian cafe industry is worth $6.6 billion. Per capita, Australia has the largest coffee market outside Europe, and the country’s coffee culture is often<\/a> held up<\/a> as the best<\/a> in the world<\/a>. Yet according to Reuters, <\/em>it is facing “a perfect storm of rising utility bills, produce costs, wages and rents plus a slowdown in discretionary spending brought on by interest rate hikes.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to a Reuters<\/em> analysis, the cost of making a flat white has increased by nearly 20%, while producing a steak sandwich has risen about 16% over the past two years. These increases have eaten into cafe profits and left many business owners looking for an out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The cost of living started to bite, especially on people who used to come in for a daily meal,” said Jack Hanna, owner of The Goodsline Cafe in Sydney, which closed just two years after opening. “People are just not willing to spend money on discretionary items when the supermarket also costs quite a lot. We had to increase our prices and pay staff a living wage.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Many sources quoted in this article mention rising wages and low unemployment as additional pressures adding to their woes and fueling inflation. “People are starting to panic with increased electricity, wages, rent,” said Guy Cooper from Link Business Sales Australasia. This is a line repeated by<\/a> the head of the Reserve Bank of Australia (and by heads of the Bank of England<\/a> and the US Federal Reserve<\/a>)\u2014even though the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a> has said that Australia’s rising inflation is due mainly to<\/a> corporate profiteering. In Australia, workers experienced<\/a> a real wage decline of 4.5% in 2022, the largest on record.<\/p>\n\n\n\n High energy prices are certainly playing a role, as are rent and mortgage increases and third-party delivery service fees. And many customers simply can’t afford to spend money in cafes. As one cafe owner notes, “Some of my regulars I used to have will still come and get coffee and say, ‘We had to bring lunch. We just brought it in from home.'”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The coffee berry borer (CBB) continues to devastate Hawaiian farms, even as farmers and authorities attempt to fight back. Increased insecticide and pesticide use is one option<\/a>, while some farmers are due to release tiny parasitic wasps<\/a> any day now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another technique proposed by researchers from the US Department of Agriculture<\/a> and the Synergistic Hawaii Agriculture Council<\/a> is cultural control-focused management: field sanitation, frequent harvesting, and strip-picking with relatively little applied pesticide. While this technique is known to be effective against CBB, the costs and benefits of such practices have until now not been examined for Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The beetle spends most of its life within the coffee fruit, where it is protected from sprays and other enemies, and each berry can contain hundreds of CBB\u2014pesticide application must be carefully timed to catch the adult female as it flies between berries looking for a new home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On the other hand, frequent harvesting removes CBB from the farm entirely. “By frequent removal of coffee fruits from farms, growers can disrupt the life cycle of CBB and ensure that they start the new season with low infestation,” research biologist Melissa A Johnson writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Johnson and colleagues published a study<\/a> in March that compared two CBB management strategies across ten Hawaiian coffee farms: conventional techniques with frequent pesticide spraying and cultural control-focused management. “Over two consecutive coffee seasons, farms that used a combination of frequent harvesting and few pesticide applications exhibited significantly lower CBB infestation, better harvesting efficiency, higher harvested yields, higher quality of processed dried coffee, and higher net profits from the sale of harvested coffee compared to that of conventionally managed farms,” Johnson writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The argument against increased harvesting, pruning, and sanitation is due to labor costs: Hawaii has some of the highest<\/a> coffee worker wages in the world. The researchers found, however, that farms using the cultural control methods saw net profits increase 48 percent while chemical control costs fell 55 percent. The study notes that “the cost of frequent and efficient harvesting is lower than that of chemical controls when the profit earned from sale of the collected cherry is considered.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read the full story here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘”I Taste So Good!” Juanita MORE! Cold Brew At San Francisco’s Ritual Coffee<\/a>‘ – via Sprudge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Catalyst Trade Hosting Inaugural Ethiopian Innovation Lots Auction<\/a>‘ – via Daily Coffee News<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Climate Change Means Coffee Market Volatility Is Likely to Continue, Lavazza Says<\/a>‘ – via Wall Street Journal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Taiwanese Pop Star Jay Chou’s Mom to Pocket $54 Million With Coffee IPO<\/a>‘ – via Bloomberg<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Beanless RTD Coffee Brand Minus Receives New Round Of VC Investment’<\/a> – via Sprudge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Costa Coffee Enters Uzbekistan With Tashkent Store<\/a>‘ – via World Coffee Portal<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Erwin Mierisch Named Executive Director of ACE and Cup of Excellence<\/a>‘ – via Daily Coffee News<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Savor Your Coffee; Someone Probably Lost Sleep Over It’ by Nic Neves<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n ‘Are There Really Mycotoxins In My Coffee?’ by Liz Clayton<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n‘Ground Down: Australia Coffee Shops an Early Inflation Casualty’ – via <\/strong>Reuters<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
‘Frequent Harvesting Proves Optimal for Managing Coffee Berry Borer in Hawaii’ – via <\/strong>Entomology Today<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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