Climate change to halve coffee growing land by 2050: report

Australia’s Climate Institute is the latest organisation to warn of the potentially devastating impacts of climate change on global coffee production. The Institute’s report, A brewing storm, warns that a continuation of the weather patterns that are being brought on by climate change – such as unusual heat spikes or unseasonal rain or drought – will make about 50 per cent of current coffee producing areas in the world unsuitable for production by 2050. The report goes further than this to warn that if these patterns continue, all wild-grown coffee could be wiped out by 2080. These changes will not just lead to increasing prices, the report says, but it could endanger the livelihoods of millions of coffee farmers in developing countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas who rely on coffee for their income. This shift in climate patterns could force coffee production to move to different parts of the globe, the report says.
“Before the century is out . . . conditions are set to become inhospitable for Arabica coffee in the wild in East Africa – its centre of origin,” the climate institute concludes in its report. As a result, coffee production will move to other parts of the world, particularly to the highlands of East Africa, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Andes.
“In just a few decades, climate change could . . . push production upslope and away from the equator,” the report says.