About Coffee

Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade Coffee

Sustainable coffee is the sector with the largest growth in the coffee industry. Its annual growth rate of between 10% and 20% exceeds the increases recorded for general worldwide consumption which in the last 20 years has increased approximately 1.2% annually. It even exceeds the ‘specialty coffee’ category which has been increasing between 5% – 10% per year. These figures however, should be seen in the context that world production year ending 2003 was approximately 6.5Million MT of which totally sustainable coffees made up at 85,000MT or 1-1.5% of total production. Both Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade coffees are now available in Australia…

Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade Coffee

Sustainable coffee is the sector with the largest growth in the coffee industry. Its annual growth rate of between 10% and 20% exceeds the increases recorded for general worldwide consumption which in the last 20 years has increased approximately 1.2% annually. It even exceeds the ‘specialty coffee’ category which has been increasing between 5% – 10% per year. These figures however, should be seen in the context that world production year ending 2003 was approximately 6.5Million MT of which totally sustainable coffees made up at 85,000MT or 1-1.5% of total production. Both Rainforest Alliance and Fairtrade coffees are now available in Australia…

About sustainability

About Decaf

SUPER UNLEADED by Mark Henderson, Science correspondent.
Losing sleep over decaffeinated coffee
First there was the success of Brasil 400, a wild fashion feira at Selfridges’ London store. And now there’s something even wilder. Brazilian scientists have discovered how to harvest naturally decaffeinated coffee. The plant itself comes from Ethiopia, not South America, but it was agricultural researchers in São Paulo who started studying this particular arabica bean back in 1987 and it is they who have found a way to hybridise it — minus 50-70 per cent of its caffeine.
For years Europeans have deemed decaffeinated coffee inferior, a tasteless treat suitable only for hypercautious, overly mellow, health-freakish Americans. The media have reinforced the stereotype that only a prudish moron would order a caffeinated beverage without the caffeine. The classic Steve Martin movie, L.A. Story, summed it up in a scene showing a group of diners at a Hollywood restaurant, in the middle of their order. Moron 1: “I’ll have a decaf coffee”; Moron 2: “I’ll have a decaf espresso”; Moron 3: “I’ll have a double decaf cappuccino”; Moron 4: “Give me decaffeinated coffee ice-cream”; Supermoron 5: “I’ll have a half double-decaffeinated half-caf, with a twist of lemon.” The joke is dated, though. The numbers now suggest it is not just overindulged Angelenos who prefer unleaded. Retail sales of coffee as a drink have topped $70 billion a year, and decaf now accounts for about 10 per cent of the world market. If decaf were mass-produced naturally (rather than using solvents which sap regular beans of their juice), industry experts predict that demand would spike like your heart rate after a double espresso.
There could be side-effects to reducing our caffeine intake, however. There are as many as a thrilling 150mg of caffeine in a cup of filter coffee; as few as 2mg in a decaf. A wise man once said that restlessness is the price of progress. Might a decrease in caffeine consumption per capita hinder this nation’s development?
Without fully- leaded espresso — there’s 100mg of caffeine in that tiny cup — tomorrow’s geniuses might simply curl up and go to sleep. Without a clear difference in taste between old-style and newfangled beans, there could be serious confusion. Caffeinated coffee and its once-insipid twin are already hard enough to tell apart. Waitresses happily serve obnoxious decaf orderers a cup of the jitters instead. But if regular and decaf start to taste truly the same, such mischief will be impossible to detect. Diners will need to be more vigilant, and nicer, and the paranoid will be up all night anyway. In the meantime, make mine a double macchiato and hold the caffeine.

The price of the kick

Arabica beans world market share: 70 per cent

Caffeine content of a cup of filter coffee: 60mg - 150mg

Caffeine content of a cup of decaff: 2mg - 4mg

Caffeine content of single espresso: 100mg

More on Coffee:

Insomnia, restlessness, anxiety, heart palpitations, raised blood pressure, miscarriage, birth defects Beneficial effects of caffeine: Raised alertness, increased fertility in men, lower risks of colon cancer, cirrhosis of the liver and Parkinson’s disease

Decaff world market share: 10 per cent

General coffee facts