I have been writing this summer on the relationship between coffee and water resources in the coffeelands — a sleeper issue that hasn’t attracted as much attention among the coffee industry’s sustainability leaders as poverty, hunger, biodiversity conservation, and other pressing issues. But that may be changing.
Ben Corey-Moran, president of specialty coffee pioneer Thanksgiving Coffee, winner of the 2012 SCAA Sustainability Award and all-around nice guy, replied to this post on the Coffeelands Blog to urge more industry engagement around water-related issues.
Then the eminent Peter Giuliano, who needs no introduction, closed this post to his blog with an important validation of the issue:
Water use in wet-processed coffees is a huge problem for coffee producing countries, and establishing ways to maximize quality and minimize water use is really really important.
And these are just the recent public comments I am aware of. I have also heard offline from other key industry stakeholders in recent weeks who are already working hard on this issue or are trying to learn more.