FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Food

Drought-Parched California Figured Out How to Grow Coffee Somehow

Those clever Californians and their whopping five inches of annual rainfall have found a way to farm a crop that is used to receiving up to 390 inches of annual rainfall, take a look at this god-like example of greenthumbery for yourself.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Nomad YC

California's ravenous locavore culture takes no prisoners. It will stop at nothing until a locally grown version of everything under the sun is achieved. From Mexico's pride-and-joy avocado crop to Australia's thousand-year-old aboriginal finger lime, you can rest assured that those clever Californians will somehow find a way to commandeer their annoyingly perfect year-round weather to grow whatever the hell they want in their own backyard.

Advertisement

Its latest casualty is your morning cup of coffee.

You can take a look at this god-like example of greenthumbery for yourself in this recent video released by Business Insider on Good Land Organics, a farm just north of Santa Barbara, California, if you don't believe us. It used to be that those lush little caffeine-laden fruity berries that you kind of need to live your everyday life could only grow in the greenest of tropical jungles near the equator, but it turns out that certain varieties can also thrive in California's ever-arid Central Coast.

READ: This Man Is Making Brownies From Discarded Coffee Bean Pulp

Apparently, you can get around coffee berries' water-heavy needs in an environment that is currently in its fourth year of extreme drought by "strategically irrigating" it. And while the video doesn't go into detail about what exactly that means, we are somewhat skeptical of a plant that usually lives in an environment (i.e., the rainforest) with an average rainfall that can exceed 390 inches of annual rainfall thriving in an area that only got 4.81 inches last year (i.e., the desert).

Even with this fierce rainfall inch difference, Good Land Organics's Jay Ruskey seems unfazed in the video, going as far as stating that "[California's] coffee industry is like its wine industry in the 1980s, we are trying to start an industry here within the next decade or so." According to the video, the coffee "tastes similar to a lot of the Central Americans"—strains that tend to taste chocolatey and fruity.

As with any other locally made, artisan whatever, the price of this local coffee is way pricier than your probably stale cylinder of Trader Joe's dark roast. A pound of the stuff is going for $60 right now (shocker), with coffee shops in Japan bidding the most for it. Watch out, Indonesian kopi luwak; Cali-grown coffee might soon even dethrone you from your dry-poop smeared—but exceptionally nutty—premium ranks.

For those curious coffee enthusiasts who are balling on a budget, you can try your hand at growing your own strain of California coffee in your very own backyard for $35 per seedling. Though, a coffee tree may be just a tad harder to grow than that resilient orange tree that keeps on giving in your backyard.