Coffee Cooperatives Against Climate Change

Will Sky High Retail Coffee Prices Ever Come Back Down?

For paid subscribers: retail coffee prices have soared in recent years, driven by climbing commodity costs and tariff stupidity. Some of those pressures have now started to ease, and yet retail prices continue to rise. Will they ever come down?

Hello, and welcome to the Roundup. Every week, I read all the coffee news and write about the best bits for Fresh Cup Magazine. Then, I summarise those bits for you in this newsletter.

While many health studies connect coffee consumption to a beneficial outcome, they often don't really know exactly what the coffee is doing. A new study may have uncovered one way. Certain compounds in coffee, researchers found, bind with and activate a receptor protein called NR4A1. This protein works as an internal regulator, helping to protect our bodies from stress and inflammation. “What we’re saying is that at least part of coffee’s health benefits may come through binding and activating this receptor", study co-author Stephen Safe said in a press release.
As this newsletter has covered numerous times, climate change is coming for coffee, and farmers are often on the frontlines of fighting it. In Brazil, some of the largest cooperatives have been stepping up to help their members, investing in things like regenerative agriculture and biochar production. Brazil is the world's largest coffee grower, and these cooperatives represent tens of thousands of producers, so their impact could be enormous.

Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol's plan to turnaround the ailing coffee giant involved many initiatives, from pared-down menus to comfier seats. He also required baristas to start writing fun messages on customers' takeaway cups, to "foster moments of connection" as a company memo read. But according to an article in the Boston Globe, customers don't always find them appealing, and unionised baristas say it has just added to their workload.

For more on all these stories, check out the full Roundup over at Fresh Cup Magazine:

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Two new ICYMI articles from yours truly last week. First, a look at just how reliant the coffee industry is on petroleum and its byproducts:

Plus, for Fresh Cup, I wrote this in-depth story on the case of Juan José Estrada Lopez, a coffee worker in Hawaii who was held in federal detention for over five months last year: