{"id":2136,"date":"2019-06-03T06:08:50","date_gmt":"2019-06-03T16:08:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/2019\/06\/03\/organic-farming-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-ant-processed-coffee\/"},"modified":"2019-06-03T06:08:50","modified_gmt":"2019-06-03T16:08:50","slug":"organic-farming-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-ant-processed-coffee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/2019\/06\/03\/organic-farming-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-ant-processed-coffee\/","title":{"rendered":"Organic Farming, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Ant-Processed Coffee"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We as consumers have in recent years put a premium on all things organic and pesticide-free; we\u2019ve even developed opinions on monoculture systems (we don\u2019t like them). And while all these sustainability-focused practices are decidedly good things, it\u2019s often easy to say what folks worlds away should<\/em> be doing when we have no real stake in the game. Many producers are just trying to eke out a living, so switching entire farming practices to follow a trend\u2014for better or worse\u2014is untenable. Ants, crickets, and beetles still exist; they are the \u201cpest\u201d the sprayed chemicals are trying to \u201cicide\u201d away. One Brazilian coffee farmer decided to make the switch to organic farming, and right on cue, the ants showed up and began carrying off his coffee cherries.<\/p>\n

But then, an interesting thing happened: the farmer started to notice discarded coffee seeds cleaned of the pulp, so he began to pick them up. Turns out, they tasted pretty good.<\/p>\n

As reported in Atlas Obscura<\/a> by frequent Sprudge contributor Rafael Tonon<\/a>, Jo\u00e3o Neto of Fazenda Santo Ant\u00f4nio in the interior state of S\u00e3o Paulo opted to move away from monoculture coffee production and chemical pesticides, practices the farm has used for decades. Neto did so for ecological reasons, to allow for the \u201cnatural rebalancing that the monoculture of coffees had extinguished\u201d at his farm. \u201cNature is in charge. If these plants have to stay here, they will resist,\u201d Neto told Atlas Obscura.<\/p>\n

And nature was hungry. The re-emergent ants began climbing up the coffee trees to knock off coffee cherries to take back to their mounds. After feasting on the pulp, the ants would leave the seeds outside the mounds, which Neto began to collect. After collecting enough seeds to \u201cfill a large coffee grinder,\u201d Neto reached out to friend and owner of Tokyo\u2019s Caf\u00e9 Paulista<\/a>, Katsuhiko Hasegawa, who wanted to see how they tasted.<\/p>\n

When Hasegawa next visited Fazenda Santo Ant\u00f4nio, he roasted the coffee and found that it had, as Neto described, \u201ca different and pleasant acidity.\u201d Others who tasted the coffee said \u201cthe flavor resembled other floral coffees with jasmine notes\u201d and that the ant processing gave the coffee \u201csweeter notes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But even after a successful trial run, don\u2019t expect to find Neto\u2019s unique coffee popping up in your local shop anytime soon. The best harvest of the ant-processed coffee didn\u2019t eclipse the 60-pound mark, and with the switch away from monoculture farming, Neto\u2019s land use for coffee production has decreased from 230 hectares to just 40. Neto is currently only making samples of the coffee, but according to Atlas Obscura, he hopes to someday sell \u201ctiny amounts\u201d of it to interested parties.<\/p>\n

Even if Neto’s coffee never sees commercial success, Fazenda Santo Ant\u00f4nio acts as a proof of concept that nature and coffee farming can coexist more or less peacefully. Keep an eye out for ant-processed coffee taking the coffee competition world by storm. Lactic processed Gesha is so 2018.<\/p>\n

Zac Cadwalader<\/a>\u00a0is the managing 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 Marvel’s Ant-Man via IMDB<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The post Organic Farming, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Ant-Processed Coffee<\/a> appeared first on Sprudge<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Source: Coffee News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We as consumers have in recent years put a premium on all things organic and pesticide-free; we\u2019ve even developed opinions on monoculture systems (we don\u2019t like them). And while all…<\/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\/2136"}],"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=2136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2136\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecurbkaimuki.com\/rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}