From "the news" this week we learn that coffee could become a rare luxury as farms are hit by climate change - words that send a shiver down the spine of the likes of me, a chronic coffee-holic.
As usual though, it's market economics that frame the story, with climate change contextualised as the increasingly inconvenient externality. A change in the dynamics of supply and demand is, apparently, all the consumer needs to consisder, as, "if more isn’t done to support coffee farmers in the country [Peru] the quality of coffee in the UK could diminish while lower production volumes could prompt prices to increase."
Capitalism is known for its contradictions, generally those that play out in the competing interests of the employee and the employer, but another aspect that I don't think is given enough thought is that between the putative moral duty of the consumer and the needs of the supplier at the source of whatever is being consumed. "Fair trade" has been presented as a more palatable alternative to "free trade" - protections for producers that factor in the workers' rights and needs to earn a decent wage under decent conditions: as opposed to an entirely laissez-faire arrangement where such things are intentionally not taken into account, so as to supply the cheapest possible product to the consumer - from which the owner of the means of production can still turn a profit, of course, but which preferably keeps the actual producers themselves in relative poverty, and so dependent on the process and whatever exploitation they may have to endure in order to ensure their own survival. Supporting "fair trade" products, then, becomes an obligation for the "ethical consumer" - buying a product that may be slightly more expensive ensures support for the producer that the market would not otherwise supply. Milton Friedman spins in his grave, everybody's happy.
None of this calls the existence of the economic process itself into question. People want coffee, therefore people must have coffee, whatever it costs - and even when that cost is, quite literally, the earth. If "50 per cent of land currently used for coffee isn't going to be suitable for it by 2050, and coffee farmers are abandoning their farms", then the conclusion to be drawn might not be, "there simply won't be enough coffee and so we could, conceivably, get to a point where coffee is no longer available for, say, £1.50 at Greggs, but becomes a premium product for only those who can afford to enjoy it" - but that we should simply stop consuming coffee altogether, not continue to consume it while externalising the environmental costs for as long as the market and/or planet can take it.
But what then of the coffee producers in Peru? Some are already finding alternative sources of income, but those that aren't continue to depend on the compulsive coffee drinkers of the world for theirs. Don't we have a duty to exchange our money for their goods? Capitalism is what lifts millions of people out of poverty every year, right? If demand ceases, then so does supply. If we rich people don't go shopping, poor people stay poor.
It seems perverse to gloss over any version of this arrangement as "fair". Trade between rich and poor is, perhaps, intrinsically unfair. Perhaps trade by definition is unfair - although, to be, um...fair - perhaps "fair" isn't well defined. I don't know the solution to this problem, but I'm pretty sure it is a problem. So much for my economic chops, I came here to talk about dandelions.
"Dandelion coffee" is, apparently, a caffeine-free alternative to the coffee that's made made from coffee. I'm certainly intrigued by the idea. It's made from roasted and dried dandelion roots - here's a good video taking you through the whole process of making it for yourself. So it's something I'd like to have a go at, but mainly for the fun of it, since there's no way I could ever source enough dandelion roots myself to meet my own demand for daily hot, black beverage. Dandelions grow here and there on my allotment, and of course they're an abundant and prolific "weed" but I'm hardly going to spend all of my spare time gathering all the roots I can find to make nearly enough for an adequate stash.
So I've started looking for reasonably priced, locally sourced dandelion coffee and, well, it's not easy to come by. Here, for example is 500g of "Grade A Premium Quality" (whatever that means) dandelion coffee for £11.99 - four times the price of the same amount of the ground coffee...from Papua New Guinea. "Having worked directly with growers in Papua New Guinea and other parts of the Pacific, we are unique in having first-hand experience of sourcing only the best goods." That'll be that "fair trade" again. Moving on.
Here's a source of "organic dandelion leaves" grown in Devon...that's no longer available. What they ever did with the roots, if anything, is unknown. Cotswolds Dandelion Root Coffee Substitute exists, but gives no indication as to where their dandelions are grown. I have emailed them to see if they might like to tell me. Other competing products contain lactose, or are only 8% dandelion extract to begin with, "very unhealthy" according to one disappointed reviewer. It's not going to be the easiest thing in the world to come by.
Of course, another option might be to just stop drinking coffee altogether - and not substitute it with anything. I wouldn't die without coffee, just as I haven't died without meat - something the wave of opportunistic vegan burger-pushers don't quite seem to have grasped yet (hey MacDonald's! vegans don't actually secretly crave meat at all, and might not always be looking for a substitute that reminds them of bloody, mutilated flesh).
I'm looking forward to trying dandelion coffee, locally sourced if all possible - and if it isn't, it might be fun to cultivate a few more dandelions on my allotment until I've enough roots to roast my own. Or I could just not do that, remove coffee from my life, and carry on living. In the end, perhaps this is the only economically sane act. Don't consume ethically: if it can be avoided, just don't consume at all.
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