Christopher Feran

i think i was actually thinking of his piece on ethiopia, but if you read between the lines of the kenyan piece it points in the same direction 1. declining production bc of climate change, shrinking ag land & competition from other crops 2. high demand that means prices don’t fall even as quality falls 3. institutional & structural rigidity that prevents the market from reacting & obscures price signal generally these forces together push the average quality of coffee down while pushing the price up 4. (not mentioned in that piece) new processesing innovations, like yeast inoculation, infusion & various controlled fermentation techniques, offer low quality producers the ability to cheaply and quickly creating process-related flavour that’s very distinctive. these profiles are often popular with low-knowledge consumers, but if widely implemented they will tend to flatten variance between producing countries and regions 5. greater processesing precision + new & cost insensitive demand + falling volumes will mean that the very highest scoring & most interesting coffees are bid up pretty high and become luxury type goods. you can see this already happening. all this together will mean that what is now a pretty diverse market will polarise — the low end will get more homogeneous as “raw” quality falls and processing becomes standardised. prices will rise for demand supply reasons. the top end will continue to get more and more expensive (and maybe slightly better)

My wife explaining how Cleveland losing the World Series was the event that triggered this whole dark timeline:

Now they’re like “this 82pt coffee was tossed in a bucket with banana peels and apple rinds for 72 hours and I’m gonna charge more for it than a top scoring coffee from Kenya!”

Coming soon 👀