If there is one country synonymous with coffee it has to be Italy. It’s the birthplace of espresso and whose coffee-drinking culture is baked into everyday life at levels not seen anywhere else in the world. (Whether or not traditional Italian espresso is good YMMV.) Italy’s role in coffee has always been on the demand side of things. And now, after a century of trying, coffee is being produced in the country, but it isn’t exactly a good thing.
As reported by ZME Science, on the outskirts of Palermo on the southern island of Sicily, the Morettino family grows Arabica coffee on roughly two hectares of land. Their most recent harvest brought in 100kg of cherries, or 15kg roasted coffee. It’s not a lot by any stretch of the imagination, but 100 years ago even that small amount was unthinkable.
The Morettinos have been roasting coffee since the 1920s, but it wasn’t until Arturo Morettino visited a coffee farm in Guatemala that the family experimented with the idea of growing coffee in Sicily. In the ‘90s they planted 60 Arabica trees donated by Palermo’s Botanical Gardens. But the experiments never resulted in anything. Some of the trees died, others adapted to the climate but never really produced.
Then in 2021, harvested started increasing. From 30kg to 50kg to 70kg and then to 100kg this year. This has led to an increased interest in coffee production in non-traditional places. Two years ago, researchers from the University of Palermo established an experimental plot of coffee trees to see how they would adapt to Mediterranean conditions. They planted a total of 25 Arabica trees of varying ages and varieties, interspersed between citrus trees and other vegetation.
Per Andrea Morettino, the coffee being produced in Italy has “notes that evoke the Sicilian landscape: white flowers, orange blossom, and raisins.”
Italy now joins an increasing number of countries testing the viability of coffee production. Portugal, Spain, even non-traditional parts of the United States like Florida are all finding coffee to grow surprisingly well. “Everything changed over the last six years; the heat became tropical in nature,” Andrea Morettino states.
Which is of course not a good thing. The reason coffee is now growing better than it historically has is climate change. As global temperatures rise, lands outside the traditional Coffee Belt are become more suited for coffee production. Which also means that the Coffee Belt is becoming too hot to grow coffee. Nearly all the 10 million metric tons of coffee produced each year comes from the Coffee Belt, and so while newer areas are becoming suitable for coffee production, they won’t remotely be able to keep up with the coffee lost as the Coffee Belt gets hotter and hotter.
This all elides over the larger issue. The world becoming less suitable for coffee production is bad, but it is also becoming less suitable for humans, which, you know, is arguably worse. Everything else is just style-pointing the end of the world.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
