Do you like coffee? Especially Arabica? Are you, like me, addicted to caffeine?
If so, that’s a bit of a problem.
Arabica, which makes up nearly three-quarters of global coffee production, is less bitter and contains less caffeine, but it’s far more valued for its flavor.
The cheaper Robusta, with its less pleasant earthy and woody notes, is much easier and cheaper to produce.
And in the current situation — climate change, unstable weather, and increasingly extreme conditions — Arabica, which is far more demanding and sensitive to anomalies, is well on its way to becoming an exclusive luxury product.
The market will instead be dominated by the easier-to-grow and more resilient Robusta.
That’s the direction Nestlé — the world’s largest food corporation — is heading. The company has introduced new Robusta varieties resistant to climate anomalies and diseases, capable of producing much higher yields under climate stress than current crops. According to company representatives, the new varieties have been stripped of the unpleasant bitterness and woody taste.
Maybe in a few years, most consumers won’t even notice. The packaging will stay the same — only instead of “100% Arabica,” it’ll say something like “100% super-magical ultra-premium Robusta bullshit.”
And if you’re unlucky enough to be among the few people for whom this actually matters, you’ll wander around the store like Lemmy Kilmister in a kindergarten, desperately searching for even one little line of real Arabica.
And if you do find it and then see the price… most of us will just shrug and say: “Honestly, that Robusta isn’t that bad.”
There will be less and less Arabica grown. It’ll become more expensive, and fewer and fewer people will be able to afford it.
In the worst-case scenarios, Arabica becomes a tiny niche in global production — a delicacy for a handful of rich people and coffee obsessives.
And there’s an even worse scenario.
It ends up like many old apple varieties: Arabica disappears from the market entirely.
The only place you’ll still drink it will be in countries where it’s grown — mostly in South America — from some local guy who owns a tiny roastery and a small patch of land where his family has been growing coffee for thirteen generations.
That’s how the free market works.
The kitchen is my space for lifestyle medicine.
I'm not a dietitian or a doctor – I'm a chef, and a member of the Polish Society of Lifestyle Medicine. Nutrition is essential to a modern kitchen, and that's nothing new: working from Hippocratic dietetic principles was part of a cook's craft centuries ago. At Rude Kitchen I tie that tradition to modern science — and to lifestyle. Read more about how I bring cooking and lifestyle medicine together on the About page.