Giving Compass' Take:

• Coffee is facing a sustainability crisis and Jeff Sachs and Kaitlin Cordes from Columbia University argue that a Global Coffee Fund would help. 

• How can funders help coffee farmers adapt? Can these farmers survive more dramatic climate change? 

• Here's an article on the hardships of coffee farming. 

Coffee is the world’s favorite drink, with more than 400 billion cups enjoyed per year. We do our part to add to that grand total! Coffee drinkers around the world love their coffee—and appreciate it, even more, when they know that their coffee is grown sustainably.

That is why we and many other coffee drinkers are deeply concerned by the sustainability crisis that has hit the coffee sector. This sustainability crisis has two main aspects. First, while the price of coffee keeps rising for consumers, prices are extremely low for coffee farmers. These low prices have pushed millions of coffee-growing families into poverty. Second, coffee is deeply threatened by climate change and other environmental ills such as water stress.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Coffee can be grown sustainably and in harmony with nature, but farm families are often too poor to invest in needed solutions or too far from science-based organizations to know about them. Because of the intertwined crises of poverty and environmental stress, the future is bleak for coffee farmers in many countries, just as new consumers throughout the world are discovering the joys of this wonderful beverage.

Read the full article about making coffee sustainable by Jeffrey D. Sachs and Kaitlin Cordes at Food Tank.