Storm in your morning cup

Many of us begin our day with a sip of tea or coffee — and punctuate its hours with these refreshing drinks. The act of drinking these is neither momentary, nor lonely — your morning cup of tea joins five billion cups drunk worldwide each day while two billion coffees are consumed globally. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the global value of tea production is $18 billion annually while coffee, which requires 10 grams to make one cup compared to tea’s two grams, amounts to $126 billion. The Fairtrade Association finds 125 million people worldwide depend on coffee for their livelihood while tea employs 14 million.

These numbers only grow when you consider the provenance to these — both tea and coffee have astounding histories. Their genealogies span brutal colonial conquest and forced labour to tectonic shifts in world powers — tea once embodied the British empire’s iron grip on cups globally. Coffee represented the rise of the United States, its frenetic productivity and its demand for this beverage from South America, Asia and Africa. Such demands weren’t always benign. They often involved hard political lobbying, the destruction of local enterprise and even regime change.

Thus, some gained and others lost in the brewing of tea and coffee — but one impact was unequivocal. Their cultivation was in plantations which took enormous swathes of land, dispossessing communities, ecosystems and non-human species. Expanding harvests were produced by massive deforestation, mechanisation and heavy chemical inputs which entered water, air and soil. Their industrial growing thus contributed to the Anthropocene’s twin faces — global warming through emissions and the crisis of biodiversity. But history moves in circles of irony and today, both coffee and tea face a breakdown of sustainability, changing temperatures, altered precipitation and soil composition hammering yields, shaking the stability of products that embodied mighty empires and enterprises.



However, there are solutions. As Times Evoke’s global experts emphasise, these industries can adopt far more sustainable practices, from shade growing to planting native trees, using organic inputs and circular methodologies. Alongside, gentle reader, we all need to see the stories nestled within our cup. Products don’t fall out of the sky — they grow from histories of people and places, ingenuity and tragedy. Join Times Evoke in discovering more about your coffee and tea, their role in shaping the Anthropocene — and how they could now brew better times.

Don't miss the yearly horoscope 2025 and Chinese horoscope 2025 for Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Pig zodiac signs. Spread love this holiday season with these Happy New Year wishes, messages, and quotes.