Outside In | China, slowly but surely, is waking up and smelling the coffee
- The world’s coffee market is in peril due to climate change, supply-chain disruptions during the pandemic and the threat of recession globally
- Against this backdrop, China is gradually moving from bulk sales of beans to building a quality reputation
In London’s coffee houses back in the 1600s, at a time when “exotic beverages” such as coffee, tea and cocoa were all in vogue, some commentators decried coffee as “the syrup of soot or the essence of old shoes”.
Such is the ubiquitous appeal of coffee today that it is apparently, after oil, the world’s second-most traded commodity. It was valued at around US$460 billion in 2021, providing around 2 billion cups of coffee a day and supporting around 125 million smallholder farmers worldwide.
Coffee connoisseurs write florid tasting notes on speciality coffees that talk airily of “notes of strawberry jam and watermelon bubblegum” rather than “the syrup of soot”. To be frank, I find it hard to imagine any coffee I ever tasted bringing to mind the scent of watermelon bubblegum.
Yet despite its success, the global coffee market is in peril. It is not just threatened by climate change and the supply chain disruptions and social clampdowns imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic, but by the imminent threat of recession. Surely an expensive beverage with little nutritional value has to be an early casualty as households cut spending and give priority to nutritional essentials.