The silicon supply chain crunch is worrying. Now comes a critical concern: a COFFEE SHORTAGE
- Reference: 1616659027
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/03/25/coffee_shortage/
- Source link:
And now The Register brings you news of a terrifying new crisis: a coffee shortage.
[1]
Bloomberg ’s Indian outpost “Quint” [2]details the disaster: droughts in Brazil have crimped supply, even as the ships and containers needed to get the diminished crop to market have become hard to find.
Quint pointed to research from liquidity hub Marex Spectron about the dire state of the market.
[3]
[4]$KC_F [5]#COFFEE [6]$JO [7]$ES
*Marex Spectron Sees Brazil Coffee Output Down 34 Percent*
*Marex Spectron Sees Brazil Coffee Harvest at 32.8M Bags Versus 50M Bags*
*Marex Spectron Sees Global Coffee Production Deficit of 10.7M Bags Versus 8.4M Bag Surplus* — AnthonyCFA (@tonycfa) [8]March 8, 2021
Stockpiles of the precious beans are at record lows, coffee futures are spiking faster than your heart rate after a triple-espresso, and the industry is bracing for cost increases.
Your correspondent, for whom a daily large skim milk latte is utterly essential between 08:30 and 09:15, recently sampled a very fine brew prepared from beans grown in a suburban backyard and roasted in a popcorn-making machine. However, advice from gardening site [9]Garden Drum suggests 30 plants, and six years of horticulture, are required to produce sufficient beans for a daily jolt.
[10]
If COVID-related lockdowns last long enough to home-brew a feasible alternative, we’ll have a lot more problems than coffee shortages. ®
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[2] https://www.bloombergquint.com/business/coffee-trade-reeling-from-virus-faces-nightmare-freight-snags
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YFxtXKc2UY9JfMO3QmFCjwAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://twitter.com/search?q=%24KC_F&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[5] https://twitter.com/hashtag/COFFEE?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[6] https://twitter.com/search?q=%24JO&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[7] https://twitter.com/search?q=%24ES&src=ctag&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[8] https://twitter.com/tonycfa/status/1368960503477919750?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
[9] https://gardendrum.com/2013/10/03/how-to-grow-your-own-coffee/
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[11] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: REM
Don't the British prefer tea?
Re: REM
It's not 1950 any more, lot of us prefer coffee these days (especially coders)
Earl Grey, hot.
Do as the Captain does.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO !
Let's stockpile! Without coffee life is not worth living!
So long as tea isn't affected, no problem.
A year on from the great bog roll hoarding ....
.... comes the great coffee hoarding!!!!!
I shall be clearing the shelf at my local supermarket on Saturday morning!
Re: A year on from the great bog roll hoarding ....
There won't be any left by then!
Funny how in "normal" circumstances, the range of coffees on the shelves includes everything from undrinkable to really good. When there is a shortage, anything reaching "acceptable" on the scale disappears almost immediately.
Rather suggests that the hoarders have some taste.
Re: A year on from the great bog roll hoarding ....
Friends don't let friends purchase supermarket coffee.
I get my coffee in 50lb bags for about a hundred bucks (up from about 75 a year ago). The beans are still green, so they last for a long time in a cool, dark, dry place. Maybe I have to roast 'em myself ... but at least we can survive the next earthquake (or coffee shortage) without worrying about it too much.
For those of you with less storage space, you can get 5 or 20 pound bags for around three or four bucks a pound, plus shipping. Yes, modified air-pop popcorn poppers work to roast the beans. One can probably find videos of how to go about it via your favorite search engine.
Re: A year on from the great bog roll hoarding ....
$2 per pound? I assume we're not talking high quality, organic, fair-trade stuff here? How much are the producers getting of that?
Programming output to fall by at least 66% in the absence of coffee. And vanilla working environment output also to fall by about 75%
I suppose your programmers can drink the stuff from the vending machines in the hall. Whatever it is, it is black, bitter, and quite possibly contains a stimulant. I don't know what it is made from. I don't think anyone does. I'm pretty sure that no one wants to know what's in it. But I'm pretty sure that it contains little or no actual coffee and therefore should continue to be available.
But won't someone think of the hipsters!! How will they ever survive without their caramel soy latte, with extra foam and chocolate sprinkles!!
Only joking. This is terrible news, just wait for the increase in the murder rate, as wives murder husbands, husbands murder wives, and flatmates kill each other for the last cup of morning coffee! It'll be a massacre, I tell you!!!
Off to the Shops
Panic Buying? Who? Me?
Give me caffeine of give me death.
Re: Off to the Shops
Actually, it will be: Give me caffeine or I'll give you death. (and a rather slow one, that is.).
And so it ends
Whoda thunk that the Extinction Level Event that ends humanity will not be a deep impact of stupidly large space boulders, an invasion of morbidly curious aliens armed with suspiciously familiar looking plumbing and kitchen utensils, or the comparatively banal option of nuclear war, but it will in fact be a deficit of coffee running through our increasingly pulsating veins?
The movie "I am Legend" suddenly makes a lot more sense.
The (New) Coffee Song
They've Got an Awful Lot Shortage of Coffee in Brazil
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTbJBnkRkFo
[2]https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/franksinatra/thecoffeesong.html
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTbJBnkRkFo
[2] https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/franksinatra/thecoffeesong.html
Sorry, but I can't help giggle a little...
... when somebody writes about his "daily large skim milk milk"...
Hope we don't end up drinking coffee substitutes based on things like chicory. My grandfather once told me about the "ersatz coffee" he drank during winters in WWII, so I tried the nearest thing that's still available. It's a foul concoction sold under the brand name "Camp". Yuck.
Nuts come from other places too
Panic not.
Brazil is by far not the only place good coffee comes from. Some of the very best is grown in Kenya, Cost Rica and Columbia.
Re: Nuts come from other places too
The point is that it's a big producer, and if they produce less, other places won't be able to compensate instantly to meet the global demand.
Meh. I have been roasting my own coffee beans (which is ridiculously easy) for years. Buying green beans in bulk (10-15kg or so) means you end up paying about 1/3 of the going retail price, and the latter is for bog standard coffee, not single origin gourmet quality, which is essentially what fresh home roasted coffee is. Green beans, when properly packaged and stored, have a shelf life of at least 2 years. So I've got the better part of 25 kg in stock and I'm ready for Armageddon. (And I'm not even mentioning home brewed beer and home distilled hooch here.)
Time to become more self-sufficient, people!
Green Beans
For those who buy in bulk and roast their own: TFA seems to say there's a shortage of beans. So...you're up against the big boys and girls for your sack of green beans. I suspect that sack will be a bit harder to get (and much pricier) in the near future
REM
“It’s the end of the world as we know it...”