Dear Friends,
I gave up caffeine several years ago when I noticed two things – my hands started shaking after my sixth Diet Coke and, when I chose to have none, my head felt like it was going to explode.
These days, while I don’t drink caffeinated beverages, I still like a morning cup of decaf coffee. While I think some traces of caffeine in there, I think what draws me to it is the ritual of getting my morning fix at my local coffee shop, the warmth of the container in my hand, and the comforting way it feels to sip on it as I get my day started.
This routine seemed like a harmless exercise until I happened to notice a Letter to the Editor in my recent copy of National Geographic. For several months, National Geographic has been spotlighting our world’s food needs as the population increases and our current methods of farming and food production are no longer adequate or sustainable.
According to National Geographic, by the year 2050, there will be 9 billion people on the planet that need to be fed – that’s 2 billion more than we have today.[1] Where will all that food come from? Large-scale agriculture and livestock production bring with them significant negative consequences – greenhouse gases, significant consumption of freshwater resources, hazardous runoff from fertilizer and manure, and widespread loss of whole ecosystems due to destroyed grasslands and tropical forests, to name a few.
And, then there’s coffee, the second most traded commodity in the world behind oil.[2]Sun-cultivated coffee –which represents the variety most sold in the world – has resulted in millions of acres of deforested land in Central and South America.[3] While shade-grown coffee is certainly more environmentally friendly, the National Geographic letter writer noted that all coffee uses a lot of resources – land, water, fuel, etc. – to produce a food that has zero nutritional value.
I hadn’t thought about that angle before. Whether coffee is caffeinated or not, whether or not it was made from sun-grown or shade-grown beans, it seems that production of this comfort food is not really addressing the urgent need we have to use our natural resources more wisely and for a more pressing concern – to feed hungry people.
I will admit to drinking the last dregs of my decaf with cream as I write this. And, it’s not going down as smoothly as it normally does. Letting go of my morning cup of Joe would be a very big deal. Is there an angle to this that I’m missing? I imagine probably not.
That’s not a comforting thought.
Warmly,