Coffee Is Not Forever: A Global History of the Coffee Leaf Rust (Ecology & History)

About this book

The global coffee industry which fuels the livelihoods of farmers entrepreneurs and consumers around the world rests on fragile ecological foundations. In Coffee Is Not Forever Stuart McCook explores the transnational story of this essential crop through a history of one of its most devastating diseases the coffee leaf rust. He deftly synthesizes agricultural social and economic histories with plant genetics and plant pathology to investigate the increasing interdependence of the worlds coffee-producing zones. In the process he illuminates the progress and prognosis of the challengesespecially climate changethat pose an existential threat to a crop that global consumers often take for granted. And finally in putting a tropical plant disease at the forefront he has crafted the first truly global environmental history of coffee pushing its study and the discipline in bold new directions.