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There\u2019s a new threat to the growth of Arabica coffee in Colombia. It\u2019s not climate change or leaf rust or unsustainably low prices. It\u2019s Robusta.<\/p>\n
According to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, Robusta hasn\u2019t exactly been popular amongst Colombian coffee growers, going so far as to call it \u201creviled\u201d in the \u201ccountry that invented Arabica snobbery.\u201d The revulsion, according to the article, comes from the perceived inferiority of the coffee\u2019s flavor compared to that of Arabica. The article doesn\u2019t outright say Robusta doesn\u2019t taste good; the WSJ lets Andrew Hetzel do it.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople say it tastes like tires. Like petroleum barrels,\u201d said Andrew Hetzel, a consultant in the specialty coffee industry. \u201cI\u2019ve even heard it described as \u2018the tears of children.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n But the economics of growing Arabica are becoming less and less tenable, especially in the face of a viable alternative. Colombian Arabica averaged a price of $1.39 per pound, over half a dollar above the average Robusta price of $.87. But Robusta is easier to grow with a higher yield (and more disease-resistant) than Arabica. Couple that with the fact that Asia, the fastest growing coffee market, is dominated by Robusta and the move starts to make sense.<\/p>\n In the face of this changing market, some Colombian farmers and scientists are experimenting with Robusta. Nestl\u00e9 has shipped 3,000 Robusta seedlings to Colombia that agronomists with the Agriculture Ministry are currently tending to under hyper-sanitary lab conditions; think sanitary smocks, hairnets, iodine foot baths, and three-stage entry \u201cto keep out insects and microbes.\u201d One businessman, Diego L\u00f3pez, has been the last decade planting small amounts of Robusta around Colombia to find the conditions where it grows best.<\/p>\n And while the country originally balked at the idea of growing Robusta lest it taint the perception of their coffee quality, the Colombian government has since espoused growing it, thanks in no small part to an increase in Robusta’s quality. In fact, Sustainable Harvest<\/a>‘s Chief Coffee Official Jorge Cuevas says that a good Robusta can be “creamy and intense, with a full, syrupy mouthfeel.”<\/p>\n Soon enough, specialty Robusta may be a much more common sight than it currently is. Imagine a coffee shop promoting \u201c100% Colombian Robusta\u201d\u2014that could be your children\u2019s future. Fucking climate change is real y\u2019all.<\/p>\n Zac Cadwalader<\/a>\u00a0is the news editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas.\u00a0Read more Zac Cadwalader\u00a0on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Top image from\u00a0What Is Natural Coffee? Let\u2019s Find Out From Counter Culture Coffee Expert Tim Hill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n The post Colombia Is Beginning To Experiment With Growing Robusta<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There\u2019s a new threat to the growth of Arabica coffee in Colombia. It\u2019s not climate change or leaf rust or unsustainably low prices. It\u2019s Robusta. According to the Wall Street…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[63,27,65,33,61,32,59,31,30],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
[Cuevas] put it this way: If robusta and arabica walked into a bar, arabica would blend in, but robusta \u201cwould be bigger, louder, funny and charismatic. It would draw a lot of attention. You can\u2019t miss it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n