cheap pound expensive coffee
TRANSCRIPT
Who would have thought that one of the immediate effects of Britain voting to leave the European Union would be a pricier cup of coffee?
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Bloomberg reports that a plummeting British Pound has made a cup of Java more expensive in Great Britain.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
U.K. coffee drinkers should brace to pay more for their morning fix as domestic roasters start to pass on increased import costs after Britain’s Brexit vote
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
London’s small-scale producers, who help supply the capital’s taste for a quality roast, are facing a steep rise in the price of coffee beans after the pound slumped to the lowest in 30 years against the dollar.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
As with most imported commodities, U.K. roasters pay for the raw product in U.S. currency, and the foreign-exchange reaction to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union has jolted the market.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Not only is the British pound worth twenty cents less than it was a year ago but coffee has gone up 20% during the same time frame.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
And as we noted in our article Americans Are Drinking More Coffee, coffee may go a lot higher.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Over the decades the price of coffee has risen above $3 a pound and fallen as low as 50 cents a pound.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Speculators such as readers of Seeking Alpha are anticipating as high as $3 a pound as stock piles fall and Americans as well as everyone else drink more coffee.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Coffee may go up in price for everyone but the cheap pound due to the Brexit vote will mean more expensive coffee in Britain than in the USA.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Tea Anyone?
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
You may be thinking that the Brits drink tea so what is the big deal about coffee.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
However, there are seven Starbucks in downtown London alone. And for that matter the Brits used to drink coffee when Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) was a coffee producer.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
That was in the days before coffee leaf rust. In our article, Is Coffee Leaf Rust Due to Climate Change we mentioned the start of this fungal disease.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Coffee leaf rust is a fungal disease. It wiped out coffee plantations in Asia in the middle of the 19 th century.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
The country of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) was a coffee producer before the leaf rust drove planters to grow tea!
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
The disease spread from the East Indies to South Asia and Africa and eventually arrived in the new world, almost a century later around 1970.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Today coffee leaf rust threatens the livelihoods of coffee growers and workers throughout Central America.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
When their colonies switched from growing coffee to producing tea the British public drank what showed up on the boat from Asia.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
Today Britain drinks a fair amount of coffee.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
The cheap pound expensive coffee dilemma will not necessarily drive more Brits back to tea because tea is also imported so its price in pounds went up also!
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
How about Organic Coffee?
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
If the Brits are hurting over the higher price of regular coffee they will feel deeper pain as the prices of shade grown and organic coffee rise even higher.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/
One can only hope that the British pound regains ground and that coffee does prices do not reach the stratosphere.
http://buyorganiccoffee.org/1705/cheap-pound-expensive-coffee
/