
Prices for dried coffee husks are outstripping those for beans - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-22/coffee-waste-is-now-fetching-a-480-premium-over-coffee-itself
======
nathancahill
It's just a momentary trend. The vast amount of coffee waste in coffee
producing countries is used for fertilizer. The title should be: In a few
select farms that produce _cascara_ , it fetches a 480% premium over coffee.

Honestly, it's high price and "premium" perception only exist because so few
farms are producing it. The tiny premium bottles of cascara you see would be
replaced by gallon jugs for $2-3 if more farms started making it.

~~~
peterwwillis
Just because it's a momentary trend now doesn't mean it's going to stop being
a trend. If it proves successful, the farms using it for fertilizer will jump
into the market to try to capitalize, which will bring the price down, but
still bring in more income than just the coffee beans (and certainly more than
feed)

~~~
nathancahill
My point is that it's not economically feasible at scale. There are mountains
and mountains[0][1][2] of organic coffee pulp, the price would plummet once
more farms produce it. The pulp isn't waste either, it's 100% reused as
fertilizer.

[0]: [https://i.imgur.com/0a306pb.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/0a306pb.jpg)

[1]: [https://i.imgur.com/Duar7Uu.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/Duar7Uu.jpg)

[2]:
[http://www.elfaroestate.com/img/large/coffeemill16.jpg](http://www.elfaroestate.com/img/large/coffeemill16.jpg)

~~~
peterwwillis
Where's the infeasibility exactly? Currently it's used as fertilizer. As long
as they can sell it for higher than the price of new fertilizer, they will be
making profit. So really the question is, how much are people willing to pay
for it, or how can companies _convince_ people they need to pay more for it?

Arabica coffee is currently 2.962 USD per kilogram, and we pay double that for
a cup of coffee using about 8 grams. We're paying 125x more for a cuppa than
the cost of the beans. So it's certainly possible someone could come up with a
way to make some small profit off the pulp. (Incidentally, tea is 0.0288
USD/kg, but obviously it weighs a lot less and we drink a lot less of it)

~~~
_JamesA_
Is that a wholesale price for tea?

As someone trying to drink more tea I find the retail price for Lipton loose
tea is about $21 USD per kilogram and other brands are considerably more
expensive.

~~~
romwell
>As someone trying to drink more tea I find the retail price for Lipton loose
tea is about $21 USD per kilogram and other brands are considerably more
expensive.

I advice against Lipton: it's overpriced because it's a familiar brand even to
people who aren't tea enthusiasts. I'd recommend going to tea stores where
loose leaf tea is sold by the pound.

For packaged black tea, I can highly recommend the following two: at about
$9/pound, they are an excellent bang for the buck for high quality loose leaf
OPA (many grades[3] above Lipton teabags):

-Ahmad OPA [1]

-Zarrin OPA [2]

As a note, $21/kilo really not that much once you convert it to cups of tea.
With green teas especially, since one can brew them several times. So the
Lipton you're talking about isn't expensive _per se_ , just for the grade you
get (dust in teabags, FBOP loose).

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Ahmad-Ceylon-OPA-Tea-
Carton/dp/B00110...](https://www.amazon.com/Ahmad-Ceylon-OPA-Tea-
Carton/dp/B0011010XY)

[2] [https://persianbasket.com/zarrin-pure-ceylon-special-
opa](https://persianbasket.com/zarrin-pure-ceylon-special-opa)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_leaf_grading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea_leaf_grading)

~~~
emmanuel_1234
Any advice on how to chose loose leaves tea, especially green tea? I'm scared
to be taken advantage of going to one of those fancy tea shop; they seem
tailored for people who prefer pretty over quality, when I just want basic
green tea, not laced with cadmium, and not 20% twigs and dust.

Brands maybe irrelevant, as I'm not in North America.

~~~
petre
The bigger, the better and usually higher quality. You will see that after the
leaves open, under hot water. Oolng teas usually have the biggest leaves -
they are normally rolled into balls and also quite expensive. If you want
something cheaper (under 5 euros/100 g) but still very good, try Gunpowder
(also rolled) or Chun Mee. These have a strong taste characteristic to pan
oxidized Chinese tea. If you don't like the strong taste, then you're either
infusing it too much (infuse for two minutes or less) or should try some of
the Yunnan varieties, specifically Mao Feng.

[https://worldoftea.org/is-chinese-tea-safe-to-
drink/](https://worldoftea.org/is-chinese-tea-safe-to-drink/)

If you don't like pan oxidized Chinese tea at all, try Formosa (Taiwan),
Korean or Japanese steam oxidized tea: Sencha, Bancha. Speaking of twigs,
there's also a variety of Japanese twig tea which actually tastes very good -
it's called Kukicha. Theese tend to have a milder taste.

[https://japanesegreenteashops.com/pages/japanese-tea-
types](https://japanesegreenteashops.com/pages/japanese-tea-types)

If you're located anywhere in the EU, I used to buy from Teegschwendner before
a Demmers franchise was establised in my country.

~~~
RugnirViking
I can second the idea of trying to get kukicha for a milder taste. I tried it
a while ago and have been buying it since then because I rather enjoyed it.

------
AdmiralAsshat
> Thanks to demand from these chains, the coffee husk now often fetches a
> higher price than the bean itself does. Batlle says she gets $7 for a pound
> of cascara, while the average price for coffee hovers around $1.20, the
> lowest in about two years, because of an oversupply of arabica beans.

So my takeaway is that it's a factor of being new trendy thing right now,
_and_ coffee beans themselves are cheaper than normal from oversupply. I
imagine the price and especially the premium ratio will balance out.

With that said, I certainly hope the trend of continuing to use the husks
continues. Coffee is a wonderful, precious fruit and I'm all for using more of
it. Most people don't even realize that coffee "beans" are the seeds of the
coffee fruit itself, which is more like a cherry. The vast majority of the
fruit is usually discarded and rinsed off the seeds, except on some varietals
where some of the pulp is allowed to remain on the seeds before being roasted
to give them more of a fruity/citrusy flavor.

~~~
hinkley
Farmers are screwed because they produce a commodity, and because there is a
couple year lag between supply and demand (you can’t count on a bumper crop
the first time you try).

The advice I see given out time and again to small farmers is to stay
boutique. Try to grow something that not everybody else is. The volumes are
low but the prices are higher. However this is always in the context of
satisfying a _local_ market. With the exchange rates who knows. And niche
produce and vegetables don’t tend to have the shelf life of beans and grains,
so you can’t ship them as far.

~~~
sailfast
This is precisely why futures markets exist- to hedge this risk for farmers.
They’re definitely not screwed here though I agree for more elastic, longer
lag products this could be a problem.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Can the farmers actually afford to gamble on the markets. I'd imagine it was
third parties up the chain that were able to afford to hedge their profiting
from the farmers labour.

~~~
sokoloff
If you have a genuine product and want to secure a steady price for it, that's
_hedging_ not _gambling_.

If I want $2/kg for my beans, I can sell futures and "lock in" that price. If
it falls to $1/kg, I'm still able to sell at $2/kg. (Conversely, if it rises
to $4/kg, I still only get $2/kg.)

On the buyer/user side, Starbucks/Dunkin could buy futures so they also locked
in a known price for the future. Whether the spot (instant market) price is $1
or $4 per kg, they may have locked in buying at $2/kg, essentially the
opposite use case as the farmer/producer. (Southwest famously did this for jet
fuel during the prior oil runup.)

Similarly, you can hedge weather and natural disasters if so inclined.

~~~
hinkley
But that was my point. _I don 't actually have the product until the end of
the year._

~~~
sailfast
Right. You buy a future that says "I will provide 30,000 units of soybeans in
St. Louis in September, at 300/unit" or whatever. You were planning on growing
325 or something, and you hedged the majority of your crop. Somebody buys your
futures contract.

Then, demand for soybeans tanks. Price drops. Doesn't matter. Somebody has
already paid you for that opportunity and locked in their price.

If soybean demand skyrockets, you miss out on the profits since you already
sold, but you locked in your expected profits for the year - congrats!

If your crops all die, there's insurance for that but you could also be
somewhat creative about call options on September soybeans to make sure you
could buy back in at a decent price to still deliver your goods. Anyway, these
markets exist specifically to help smooth out price insecurities on
commodities for goods producers.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>on commodities for goods producers. //

Can you demonstrate that's true in general for producers of commodities in the
third world? I don't doubt it's true for middlemen, or companies relying on
producers.

If you can, could you also show what proportion of profits are diverted to
hedging vs the proportion lost to reduction of risk exposure for a
multinational in, let's say, coffee/chocolate or some other comestible.

------
evan-arm
If you want to try cascara straight up yourself as a tea, Sweet Maria's[0]
sells it:

[https://www.sweetmarias.com/colombia-finca-la-vega-
cascara-t...](https://www.sweetmarias.com/colombia-finca-la-vega-cascara-
tea.html)

Shipping might be a little high if you're buying just that, but they do will-
call pickup in Oakland too.

It's good - it has a light fruit flavor, and has a bit of coffee tastes
without being bitter.

0: Sweet Maria's is a great shop and resource for green coffee and roasting.
If you drink even a moderate amount of coffee, roasting your own is pretty
easy and pays for itself in a few months. If it sounds up your alley, skip the
air popper and get a real roaster, though.

------
wesleytodd
A few years ago a friend of mine started importing this stuff. He got a sample
of a syrup made, and then started selling it. It was a slow start because he
was just one guy and had other interests, but then I remember when he told me
that Starbucks was starting to make a seasonal cascara drink.

Seeing this just reminded me how often it is that opportunities for little
startup's are missed because the founder was unable to commit fully at the
time.

Plug for him, here is where he was selling it:
[http://www.inspiredcoffee.com/](http://www.inspiredcoffee.com/)

~~~
wesleytodd
And if you live in Michigan, his syrup is used in this Bloom kombucha sold at
Meijer.

------
FullyFunctional
Does anyone other than Starbucks sell it? I'd like to try it but am skeptical
of Yet Another fad.

OT: "low-fat cappuccino whose foam and syrup have been spiked with an extract
made from a blend of sugar and ground-up dried coffee husk" \-- low-fat +
loads of sugar is an oxymoron. The sugar industry is killing us all.

~~~
ryanx435
Fat is fat, sugar is a carb. They are different macro nutrients, so I don't
know why you think low fat and high sugar is an oxymoron.

~~~
tudelo
It's true but probably misleading to the people who the advertisement line is
directed to. Of course, that's definitely the intention. It seems odd that
anyone would want to have a low-fat diet voluntarily.

~~~
icebraining
Lots of diets are odd. Plus it's just a coffee beverage, not soylent; it's not
supposed to be your whole diet.

Personally, I prefer the taste of low-fat milk.

------
cwkoss
I thought this was going to be referring to coffee grounds: they make a great
compostable or soil amendment, and somewhat acidic so can be used to balance
soil pH for crops like blueberries.

Soil amendments tend to be pretty cheap, by weight, though...

------
joshe
Chocolate husk tea is also a tasty switch up. You can have it hot without milk
or sugar and it won't be bitter. It has a nice flavor and a little of the
theobromine kick.

One example: [http://tisano.com/](http://tisano.com/)

~~~
perl4ever
I experimented once with trying to brew a drink by running hot water through
ground cacao beans. It produced a red liquid that looked kind of like tea, and
had a very pronounced unsweetened chocolate flavor. The main difficulty was
that cacao beans have much more fat (I guess) in them than coffee beans, so
tend to clog up your filter.

------
Bokanovsky
I first heard about cascara last year and wanted to try some. However I live
in the UK and it was withdrawn from sale due to some confusion around "Novel
Foods". The EU defines this as “food that has not been consumed to a
significant degree by humans in the EU prior to 1997”.

There was for a while a bit of confusion with independent coffee shops if they
could sell it and make drinks with etc. -

[https://unitedbaristas.com/blog/insights/2017/03/the-
cascara...](https://unitedbaristas.com/blog/insights/2017/03/the-cascara-
raids/)

I think it's been resolved, but I can't find much online about it.

------
billysielu
Well that's one way of saying farmers don't get paid much for coffee beans.

------
HillaryBriss
i've heard that coffee is one of the most heavily sprayed crops in production
today. do these coffee husks, or cherries, have significant amounts of
pesticide residue?

~~~
nathancahill
Cascara is produced from coffee that isn't sprayed.

~~~
hinkley
Aha. There’s your price premium.

There’s a market for pesticide free cherries but not the same market for
pesticide free beans. So you divide your crop into two piles and one sells
into a channel where your extra labor isn’t a differentiator.

Were we quoted the price for organic coffee beans or conventional?

~~~
phlo
Conventional.

For comparison, fair trade ranges from $1.40 to $1.90 (organic on the higher
end). Direct trade starts at $2 or so at the low end, averages around $3.50 or
so and can approach double digits for top-end specialty coffee.

Afaik the quality of the cascara is even more sensible to farming and
processing conditions that the bean, so I'd expect a large part of the cascara
production to come from higher-end farms anyway.

~~~
lostlogin
What are the units those prices are for? The green beans I buy are in the
range of $7-14US per Kg.

~~~
phlo
USD per lb of green beans in bulk. According to one finva I visited at some
point.

On some quick research, apparently on the extreme high end, lots can go for as
high as $600 per lb.

[https://dailycoffeenews.com/2017/07/26/record-coffee-
earns-6...](https://dailycoffeenews.com/2017/07/26/record-coffee-
earns-601-per-pound-at-best-of-panama-auction/)

------
phyzome
This seems similar to how slaughterhouses make more money off the rendered fat
and other "byproducts" than the meat.

------
null000
If you're measuring both on a per-pound level, kinda makes sense. One coffee
bean produces a lot more bean than husk.

------
bfuller
Off topic but I went to a coffee farm in Antigua and it was EXTREMELY
interesting. I recommend it for all coffee lovers.

~~~
whitepoplar
what was most surprising about your visit?

~~~
bfuller
That the process basically hasn't changed since the farm opened in the 1800s.

~~~
matwood
If you like that sort of thing with a legacy/history in the process, then
you'll also enjoy touring old wineries and distilleries.

------
tsomctl
As a side note, coffee chaff makes excellent mulch. It gets wet and then forms
a thick mat that keeps the water i.

------
the_cat_kittles
i remember stumptown selling cascara a full 6 years ago. it was crazy
expensive then too. i think this article is framing the thing wrong by
overemphasing starbucks

~~~
rconti
Eh, the quote says it all; they're great at taking something and introducing
it to the masses.

Funny thing is, I've seen cascara drinks advertised by Starbucks but didn't
know what it was until now. I think they call it a cascara cold foam something
or other so I thought 'cascara' was just a branding term for something to do
with the foam or milk; I had no idea it was actually a 'thing'.

I don't frequent small coffee merchants in person (drinking Stumptown Cold
Brew on tap at work as I type this!) but I've been to enough
Storyville/Ladro/Stumptown type places and never seen it either.

~~~
Alextigtig
What's funny about how SB is going about this is as another flavor syrup to
add to lattés. That way, the flavor is about as masked as any hazlenut cream
they dump into a frappuchino. It's too bad, because cafes that sell
exclusively cascara-based drinks can actually churn out some really decent
stuff, but SB's "cascara foam" is more like a fancy way to brand some flavored
sugar.

IMO, where the debate really gets interesting is how cascara might shift the
balance of direct trade relationships: because so many farmers rely heavily on
cooperatives to purchase high-volume dry milling equipment, farmers almost
always act cooperatively with their coop. However, because cascara is
something that individual farmers can make without expensive machinery, it
might start to fracture the thousands of coffee coops that make up lots of the
source-level industry.

