Crisis of high mountain coffee production in Mexico: Principal contributors and further perspectives.

Abstract

As a researcher, we have to be able to cover a wide range of topics related to any field, from chemistry to biology. During the development of solutions, it is important to identify the roots of the problem. This can lead to the generation of knowledge from different perspectives. A perfect example is this work, which started as the study of coffee leaf rust in Mexican crops, where 70% of the total production is lost due to this disease. However, as we continued, we identify other crucial factors, not only related to coffee rust adaptation, but behind the urgent crisis of high mountain coffee in Mexico: the COVID pandemic, that has generated losses of 40% in the coffee demand, the fluctuations in the patterns of precipitation and temperature as a result of climate change since 2006 to the present time, and the lack of opportunities to access to a more competitive market, as a smallholder. Therefore, to generate an integral solution, besides politics and socio-economical reforms, we decided to take a circular economy approach. How can we create new sources of income for this sector and at the same help to reduce climate variability? Our answer, through the introduction of coffee by-products to the value chain. Mexico is the leading exporter of High mountain coffee in the world; Thus, by the generation of technology base on coffee by-products, we can tackle both problems. The examples are caffeine bio adsorbents, made of the coffee husk, or spent ground coffee, used as a substrate for bioethanol production. Even in the future, coffee by-products can serve as raw material to develop scaffolds for catalysis reactions. In the end, the principal purpose of this research was to offer alternatives to ensure the prevalence of high mountain crops, which are the basis of Mexican coffee.