Coffee crunch

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SEATTLE - The coffee urns at Starbucks Corp. aren't likely to run dry anytime soon, but the company is worried that its brisk growth could create a big problem: finding enough high-quality beans to satisfy increasing demand for its lattes and macchiatos.

The Seattle-based coffee retailer is expanding rapidly, opening more than three stores a day and planning to more than triple the number it operates to about 25,000 worldwide.

"Clearly we're concerned, at our company growth rate, that there's going to be enough high quality, Starbucks-quality coffee available," said Willard "Dub" Hay, the company's senior vice president for coffee.

It's not that Starbucks is using up all the world's coffee. The company said it buys about 2 percent of the coffee produced. But Starbucks is a major buyer of high-quality coffee, and there is much less of that to go around.

To get the beans it wants, Starbucks always has been willing to pay extra currently, an average of $1.20 per pound. That's as much as twice the market rate, said Ted Lingle, executive director for the Specialty Coffee Association, a trade group.

But, as its needs increase, Starbucks is learning that paying more won't guarantee it all the beans it needs. To really solve its future supply problems, Starbucks said, it needs to help farmers grow better coffee.

So the company has opened what it calls a farmer support office in Costa Rica, one of the world's biggest coffee producers.

"There's a lot of specialty coffee out there," said Peter Torrebiarte, the Costa Rica office's general manager. "It's just a matter of finding it."

Beginning with the office in Costa Rica, Starbucks hopes eventually to employ a fleet of agronomists, or specialists who deal with crop production and soil management. Armed with laptops and four-wheel-drive vehicles, they will search the region for potential suppliers and help farmers who want to grow coffee for Starbucks get their crops up to par.

Starbucks also is revamping a program, called CAFE Practices, that rewards coffee suppliers who make environmental improvements. The concern is that the coffee farms won't be able to continue producing high-quality coffee if they don't reduce agrochemical use, conserve energy and otherwise improve how they treat the land coffee is farmed on.