2015-07-29 08:25:18
Drought, flooding, disease - climate change is already threatening the source
of our caffeine fix. Are we facing the end of coffee as we know it, asks David
Robson.
By David Robson
29 July 2015
As we sip our lattes and espressos and read the daily headlines, climate change
can seem like a distant threat. But travel a few thousand miles to the source
of your caffeine fix, and the turbulence is all too real.
Consider the coffee farmers in Chiapas, Mexico, recently interviewed by
researcher Elisa Frank from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Compared to the gentler showers they were used to, they are now seeing violent
downpours that waterlog the plants in their care. When we were growing up, the
rains didn t fall this much, one interviewee told Frank. The plants produce
less. The leaves and fruit fall because of the wetness.
Where farmers once enjoyed stable, mild conditions, the temperature now seesaws
between cold that stunts growth, and heat that dries the berries before they
can be harvested. Then there are the hurricanes and landslides; sometimes, the
mud can swallow up plantations. As one farmer put it: The weather is very
strange. Strange things come that we didn t see before.
Peak coffee
These problems are by no means confined to Mexico. Farmers across South
America, Asia and Africa are watching coffee plants dwindle as droughts,
downpours, and plagues of pests attack their crops, as a result of global
warming.
The world currently enjoys a two-billion-cup-a-day habit. How can we ensure
that we get that caffeine fix in a turbulent climate?
The consequences of this unrest could soon work their way through the pipeline
to your local coffee shop. The world currently enjoys a two-billion-cup-a-day
habit. How can we ensure that the coffee still flows, when the crops are being
ravaged by extreme weather? And if the farmers can t meet that demand, will we
soon reach peak coffee ?
Some worry that our efforts to combat these challenges will only create further
environmental devastation. Others suggest that the only solution is to change
the beloved flavour of the drink itself. Whatever the answers, savour your
espresso while you can: we may be facing the end of coffee as we know it.
The problem arises, in part, from the refinement of our palette. There are two
main breeds of commercial coffee: the more aromatic Coffea Arabica, and the
more bitter Coffea Robusta variety. Thanks to its complex flavours, Arabica is
by far the world s favourite, accounting for about 70% of the coffee we drink.
Those genteel qualities that we favour come at the price of the plant s
physical strength, however: it is far more sensitive to stress than its more
robust cousin. As BBC Magazine recently explained, almost all the commercial
Arabica plants have been bred from a very small stock taken from the mountains
of Ethiopia giving it very little genetic diversity and making it
particularly vulnerable to climate change. The plant grows best between a very
narrow range of relatively mild temperatures 18 to 22C and needs gentle,
regular rainfall. It needs a very particular climate that you can only find in
a few locations around the globe, says Christian Bunn at the Humboldt
University in Berlin. That makes it very different from other crops, like corn
plants bred for thousands of years to adapt to many different environments.
The delicate Arabica plants just can t cope with the new and unpredictable
conditions that come with global warming. In Mexico, for instance, the rising
temperature seems to have brought heavier rainfall, which is battering the
plants before they have time to seed. The coffee plant only flowers for 48
hours, so if something happens during flowering if there s a big storm then
the whole crop is destroyed, explains Ainhoa Magrach at the Institute of
Terrestrial Ecosystems, ETH Zurich.
Even when the plants did blossom, the berries were shrivelled and small
Other places have the exact opposite problem: drought. When Oxfam questioned
coffee producers in the Rwenzori Mountains of Uganda, they complained that
hotter, drier seasons were causing the plants to drop their flowers before they
had turned to fruit. Even when the plants blossomed, the beans were shrivelled
and small. Further stresses come from the fact that the coffee plant s enemies
can thrive in hotter weather including pests such as leaf miners, coffee
berry borers, mealy bugs and diseases like leaf rust, all of which ravage
crops. During one of the most recent epidemics, Central America saw its
harvests drop by 20% in 2013, after an onset of leaf rust and such events may
be more common as the climate warms even more.
Calculating the long-term costs isn t straightforward - it can be difficult to
separate single, freak events from broader trends - but looking at coffee
yields in Tanzania since the 1960s, one team has found that the crops fell from
a high of 500kg per hectare to just over 300kg today. Importantly, the drop
seems to closely follow a temperature rise of about 0.3C per decade, and an
associated reduction in rainfall.
All of which paints a bleak picture for the future. Using the latest figures
for climate change across the globe, Bunn s calculations predict that the land
suited to farming Arabica could drop by as much as 50% by 2050. Classic
coffee-producing regions, such as Vietnam, India and most of Central America,
will be hit particularly hard.
We can expect coffee to become more of a luxury, with prices shooting up by
around 25% by 2050
The consequences will be serious for farmers and coffee lovers alike. For one
thing, we can expect coffee to become more of a luxury, with prices shooting up
by around 25% by 2050 according to Bunn s calculations for his PhD thesis. It
will be particularly noticeable, he says, considering that most other crops are
set to become cheaper and cheaper as technology and productivity continues to
improve. When that s taken into account, coffee will in fact be 50% more
expensive than it would have been without climate change, Bunn says.
It s unlikely the farmers will see the profit. After years of turmoil, many may
just choose to switch to more stable crops. When we take our results and
confront coffee producers, everyone tells us this is true people in
low-elevation Central America are already giving up on coffee production, Bunn
says. Everyone is shifting to rubber plantations.
The demand for coffee can only be met if we encroach on 2.2 million hectares of
valuable rainforest
Given the money on offer, others will almost certainly move to fill our empty
cups and that could come at a huge cost to the environment. Magrach recently
mapped out the areas suitable for Arabica farming and compared it to areas of
natural interest. In the worst case scenario, she found that we will need to
encroach on 2.2 million hectares of rainforest to meet the predicted demand
an area about the size of Wales. The result would be a significant loss of
biodiversity.
There may be better solutions. Given its hardiness, Robusta will be better able
to weather the changes; Magrach s models even suggest that its preferred
habitat may grow as a result of the rising temperatures. If so, a simple change
in taste may offset the coffee crash provided we can grow to love its
bitterness. It would definitely be better for the forests, says Magrach. At
the very least, she hopes that food labelling will make it clear in future
whether the beans were farmed from vulnerable areas, so that consumers are
aware of the environmental cost and can shop more ethically.
Others hope that improved farming techniques will instead keep the coffee
flowing. Along these lines, the Coffee and Climate initiative is helping more
than a dozen different coffee producers to join forces and share notes on the
best ways to deal with the oncoming challenges. One option, for instance, is to
graft Arabica strains to the roots of Robusta plants, making a hybrid that is
more resistant to drought while retaining the preferred aromatic flavour.
Alternatively, selective breeding could help produce a variety that combines
the best of both Robusta and Arabica. It s something people are working on,
but we re not sure when the new strains will be available, adds Magrach.
The livelihoods of farmers and others in the coffee business at least 25
million people according to one estimate depend on us finding an answer,
fast. For the time being, the farmers face daily uncertainty, as Elisa Frank
found during her interviews in Mexico. It can be hard to weather. Although many
of the farmers listen to the TV forecasts, and try to prepare for the oncoming
downpours, they can t help but feel helpless, swept away by forces beyond their
control.
Some of the farmers feel that the subject has almost become a taboo. We talk
very little about climate, one told Frank. We already know how it is here
and there is nothing we can do.