Sidamo Slipping?

With the rains in India threatening their coffee harvest and the financial strife of Brazilian farmers unable to secure the necessary funds for nurturing and harvesting their crops, Ethiopia's recent revelation that drought is adversely impacting their coffee crops in two significant regions gives us pause. Is it possible that such an essential staple of countless cultures around the globe is at risk of exhaustion? Government assessors evaluated Ethiopia's coffee harvest during this past November and found that coffee production in Sidamo and Gedeo may fall nearly 60% this year as a result of the extended drought in those regions. Combined with the falling commodity prices and the rising costs of food, the risk of a severe increase in starvation in a region already so brutalized by ongoing famine is a sobering thought. Throughout its history, coffee has been a crop that has rolled with the proverbial punches: It has withstood civil wars and economic collapse, its ripening cherries at the heart of stimulating debates and late night international judgment calls. Yet it seems that the current agricultural methodology may not be able to support itself -- and if we don't make a concerted effort to address some of the systemic issues that are resulting in these symptomatic losses, we just might find ourselves in a significantly less stimulating world -- literally. After all, if coffee can't make it in its own home town, where can it make it?