Coffee Beans
Image by jakeliefer via Flickr
Coffee Beans
In a country which is traditionally thought of as tea growing and drinking, (I wouldn’t do that for all the tea in China etc etc) you might be surprised to learn that there is now a growing demand for coffee in China. The economy in China is changing fast, and as more people flock to the cities, have more money in their pockets and becomes generally more “westernized”, coffee is quickly becoming high on the agenda.
Even Starbucks is scheduled to open its first farmer support center in China. The Yunnan government is scheduled to invest US$450 million to increase coffee acreage by 2020. That is a lot of coffee beans. Not only do they intend to help China become a nation of coffee drinkers, but also to introduce coffee grown in China to the rest of the world.
Environmental Impact of Coffee
This, however, is not without some major concerns. The Yunnan Province is extremely environmentally sensitive, with no less than four major rivers as well as acres and acres of old growth forest. If the production of coffee is not monitored to be environmentally sound and free from chemicals, then the whole region would be devastated. The problem is that, typically, industrial coffee farms do use lots of chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers, all of which can poison the waterways and surrounding land, and processing creates lots of waste products too – all of which can end up in the local waterways without some pretty hefty environmental management procedures.
Let’s just hope that in bringing coffee to China, China doesn’t lose out too much in any other ways.
