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Puerto Rico bets on a coffee comeback
Thousands of rural families in Puerto Rico's rugged central mountains want to rebuild their traditional coffee economy after the devastation of Hurricane Maria. And one year on, they're betting on a dedicated group of millennials to get the job done, writes Tom Laffay. If they don't succeed, it could mark the end of coffee in Puerto Rico, forcing these last families to leave the island for good.
Puerto Rican coffee farmers lost an estimated 85% of their crops, or some 18 million coffee trees valued at $60m (£46m), and many have lost their homes in the wake of hurricanes Irma and María. [...] On average, 80% of coffee trees were destroyed by Hurricane María.
[...] ConPRometidos is an NGO run by millennials with a mission to create a stable, productive, and self-sufficient Puerto Rico, harnessing the energy, ideas and finances of the island's young diaspora. It began its work about six years ago in tapping into the know-how of young exiles in order to help address some of the problems they had left behind.
The hurricanes presented a new challenge but the plight of the coffee farmers caught the group's eye. They are soliciting a $3m grant from the Unidos por Puerto Rico Foundation to fund a five-year, island-wide project that aims to provide much needed relief to the island's coffee sector. The island can produce 240,000 quintales (100lb) of coffee but is only hitting 40,000, says the organisation's 30-year-old co-founder Isabel Rullán, which means it's importing coffee unnecessarily. Increasing production could bring about $65m dollars to the poor mountain regions, she says.
Related: Second-Largest Blackout in World History Hits Puerto Rico
Puerto Rican Death Toll From Hurricane Maria May be Many Times Higher Than Official Estimate
Puerto Rican Officials Raise Hurricane Maria Death Toll to 2,975 Following GWU Report
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 20 2018, @01:17PM (18 children)
By that logic, we could as easily ask, "What good is it for farmers in Oklahoma to replant and rebuild? What will happen when the next tornado comes along?"
We start over again because that is what we do.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday September 20 2018, @01:45PM (7 children)
Fair point. I suppose I was doubting how truly self-sufficient someone can be in a region that becomes frequently wracked by hurricanes. Perhaps I underestimate human resilience and resourcefulness.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:16PM (4 children)
Among the reasons that the Aborigine can go on walkabout through the Australian desert is that whenever they find some water, they'll fill an ostrich eggshell by spitting into it, burying it then telling all the other Aborigine where it is.
The pygmies of the African jungle live largely on elephant meat. They swarm the elephants.
During my own walkabout through the San Joaquin Valley of California, I kept an eye out for trees, then ate the leaves of the plants that grew beneath them, as well as cactus. (Just don't eat the skin of cactus - it gave me the shits.)
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:55PM (3 children)
Hi Mike, you know Ostriches don't grow in Australia don't you?
Maybe you have them confused with the Thunder Bird [wikipedia.org] or the Demon Duck of Doom. [wikipedia.org]
Funny story, I saw one of those once, outside the Flinders St. Station in Melbourne waiting for a taxi.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:16PM (2 children)
However Wikipedia said Ostrich farming in Australia gave rise to feral ones.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday September 20 2018, @09:19PM (1 child)
Oh, I was not aware of that.
I did eat Kangaroo once in a nice restaurant in Melbourne.
When you're visiting a country you should always make an effort to eat their national symbol.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @12:36AM
For your own good I hope you never visit Dickland.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @04:34PM (1 child)
They've had a coffee industry on that island since the 18th century, so I don't think that hurricane was the first one to have hit their plantations.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @04:59PM
They are competing in a globalized economy now. And it may be that the hurricanes are getting stronger and/or more frequent.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:02PM (4 children)
Sure, but are they going to be hit by more frequent and more powerful hurricanes? There's only so many times you can be wiped out before you have to pick up and leave.
And unlike other Caribbean islanders, Puerto Ricans can pretty easily migrate themselves to the mainland United States.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:47PM (3 children)
Granted, lots of people there are really poor. The place is kind of socialist, and they'd be like Venezuela if they didn't have the US federal government controlling the currency.
For the sort of people who can build normal American suburban homes though, it isn't much of a price difference to build tornado-proof housing. It's actually cheaper when labor is costly, but I'm guessing labor is cheap in Puerto Rico. Several of the houses built in the www.monolithic.org style have withstood tornados.
Plants are more trouble, especially keeping costs down...
The plants are normally pruned to not exceed 2 feet tall. That isn't too big. If you put them in pots, you can bring them inside. You can use a forklift. There are nursery robots to move pots now.
You can of course also grow them indoors. Fortunately, they don't like much light.
There is always insurance of course. The trouble here is that farmers who don't buy insurance will have lower costs than those who buy insurance. The insurance buyers will go out of business before the disaster even happens.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday September 20 2018, @03:08PM (2 children)
I thought about bringing them indoors. If you're going to grow them indoors all the time, you might as well not grow them in Puerto Rico. Unless you can build some sort of open structure that reduces (wind?) damage but lets in most of the sunlight.
Bringing the plants indoors temporarily seems like a difficult task. Although there are a lot of unemployed people in Puerto Rico who might be temporarily hired to help that happen. One big problem is that you only have days of advance notice before a major hurricane hits. It could veer off and leave the crops unscathed. It would suck to bring the plants indoors only for it to be a false alarm.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 20 2018, @08:00PM
Seriously, the plants don't need much light. They die in full sunlight. It's the same with cocoa bean plants. They naturally grow at the bottom of a forest.
Any "sort of open structure that reduces (wind?) damage but lets in most of the sunlight" will kill the plants. A normal house with windows is almost perfect for coffee beans, lacking only the high humidity... and soil too I guess, unless your floor is beyond dirty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 21 2018, @04:47PM
Robusta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffea_canephora) beans are what they should be growing. Cheap, hardy, & enough caffeine content to wake the dead.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Thursday September 20 2018, @02:13PM (4 children)
Did a single tornado wipe out the entire state of Oklahoma?
Is such a tornado due again next year, and each year into the future, with increasing frequency due to climate change?
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 20 2018, @04:56PM (3 children)
"Tornado alley" ring any bells?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 20 2018, @05:27PM (2 children)
Isn't the damage from a single massive tornado usually limited to a community or two and maybe a string of farms?
It's not as though the state's infrastructure is entirely destroyed.
Yes, they will get worse and more frequent. But nothing like a hurricane?
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(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday September 20 2018, @07:57PM (1 child)
Joplin, Missouri [theatlantic.com]. It looks pretty bad to me.
What level of entirely destroyed is entirely enough?
Mississippi Flood of 1993 [wurstwisdom.com]. Hmm, looks pretty flooded out and destroyed to me. Do totally destructive floods from a river count, or do they have to come from a hurricane?
Also, I'm pretty sure those people went right back to living, working, and farming on the banks of the Mississippi, even though floods will probably come again and be worse with climate change and such.
Nature is always tearing down what we build. Anyone who owns a home knows that. Nature is gonna keep on doing it, too, even after humanity has died out or spread out to the stars.
So why, again, can Puerto Ricans not rebuild and begin again after a hurricane?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday September 20 2018, @10:10PM
I know Joplin was pretty bad. And I know of other towns, smaller than Joplin that have been largely or completely destroyed. It doesn't seem to be on the same scale of destruction of a hurricane which can seriously affect entire states.
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