Most consumers don’t know anything about the process that coffee beans undergo before they arrive in their cup or the thousands of people whose livelihood depend on it. The Center for Coffee Research and Education, a program of the Borlaug Institute at Texas A&M University, wants to change that, both by educating the public and by addressing the threats coffee plants are facing.
The crisis is threefold, says Dr. Roger Norton, director of the Center for Coffee Research and Education. Coffee rust, a disease that can wipe out half a harvest, is running rampant in coffee plants throughout the world. Rust, and plant diseases in general, are made worse by a warming climate. Climate change also forces farmers to grow coffee plants at ever-higher altitudes to keep growing high-quality beans. These factors, combined with low coffee prices for the past 10 years, means coffee farmers have had a hard time making a living off coffee alone. Many won’t make enough money from their crop to make harvesting worth it, so they abandon their farms, triggering high rates of migration from places like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
“The project in Central America addresses all three problems with hybrids that produce more fruit, are disease resistant, are high quality, and have an earlier yield — in one year instead of three,” Norton says. The center’s three-year Resilient Coffee in Central America project, funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID), just ended its work in April. Between introducing hybrid plants and helping farmers find other crops to supplement their income, the center hopes to improve both quality of beans and quality of life.
Farmers can get paid more for their product if they sell specialty beans, and Central America is the leading region in the world for specialty coffee. Specialty coffee has a very specific designation, says Eric Brenner, program coordinator of the center. It’s always 100% coffea arabica, a high-quality bean and the most popular coffee variety. The unroasted, green beans chosen are completely mature with few defects, and they’re usually roasted in small batches.
“When you pick the coffee cherries, you get a variety of quality,” says Rodrigo Chavez, owner of What’s the Buzz Coffee Company and former manager of the Resilient Coffee in Central America project. “[Farmers] can sort out the good ones and get paid more, and get paid less for the bad ones. But if they’re sold in bulk, the good is mixed in with the bad, and they get one bad price. And the importer usually sorts it anyway and gets paid more.”
Finally, the brewed coffee is reviewed by experts in a process called cupping where they taste the coffee and rate it out of a 100-point rubric. Only brews rated 80 points or higher can be called
specialty coffee. “It’s a whole world that most people don’t have a clue exists,” Brenner says. “We’re trying to bring it to the mainstream by educating people on quality coffee. We want to bring the culture of coffee above ground.”
Many small coffee farmers have never tasted the beans they sell and have no idea how good their product is.“Our mission has always been to help small farmers through better research, training, and technology,” Brenner says. “They can’t bargain for better prices if they don’t know their cupping quality.”
What’s the Buzz Coffee Company is providing a market for these specialty coffee blends through a partnership with the university. Its 12th Man collection features beans from small farmers and pays them what their beans are worth. In turn, customers get a high-quality brew, roasted in small batches. A portion of the licensing fee goes straight to fund the center.
“An extra dollar a day means a lot for many coffee growers. Sometimes it doubles their income,” Chavez says. “Maybe that means they send two kids to school instead of one, or they can now pay for medicine. The equator is the coffee belt. But it’s also the conflict belt. And the hunger belt. And I think they’re related.”
Even byproducts from producing coffee can turn a profit. Norton knows a farmer who makes more selling cascara, the husk of the coffee fruit often used to make tea, than he does from the beans. The center also has helped farmers supplement their income by diversifying their farm with lemongrass and beehives.
Since the funding from USAID has ended, the Center for Coffee Research and Education is shifting its focus to the U.S. to educate the coffee consumer. “We want to bring the projects we’re doing in other countries here and strengthen and expand them,” Norton says. “We want to share our knowledge and promote the world of coffee.”
It doesn’t matter how good the quality of the beans are if the farmers can’t sell them. That’s why consumer education is just as important. “I see our work having a positive impact on thousands of people around the world,” says Brenner. He encourages consumers to help by becoming educated, demanding a better product, and being willing to pay more when the quality is superb.
The Center for Coffee Research and Education is one of very few places in the world devoted to studying the plant, surprisingly, despite it being such an important global crop. The center got
its start after the Rwandan genocide, when USAID attempted to help Rwandan women support themselves through better-quality coffee. The Bourlaug Institute at Texas A&M partnered with industry leaders to meet the need for research on coffee plants, and World Coffee Research (WCR) was born.
“There’s been a lot of research done on wine grapes, but nothing like that for coffee beans, even though it’s a much more complex science,” Brenner says. “It’s like a lightbulb went on, and the need was identified.”
Aggies collaborated with other universities to create the coffee taster’s flavor wheel and the coffee lexicon it’s based on. The Center for Coffee Research and Education replaced WCR when it became a separate entity to continue research for the university.
Today the center is working on building a coffee lab, so it can add a full-size roaster and expand their in-house trainings. The community can learn about specialty coffee and good coffee preparation through courses on cupping, quality issues, the history of coffee, and coffee genetics, with more courses in the works.
“At the center, we do a demo and explain the process from bean to cup,” Brenner says. “The only thing we can’t show right now is the coffea arabica plant because they don’t grow in the U.S., but hopefully with support we could build a greenhouse to grow plants in and show visitors the whole process.”
Brenner and Norton hope to make the Center for Coffee Research and Education a destination — and not just for students. “We want to bring Texas A&M to the forefront of the coffee world,” Brenner says. “We want to be known for good coffee.”
