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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Coffee drinkers face a climate catastrophe, reports The Guardian, reporting on a study published by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) under the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS).
According to the Guardian, interviewing Dr Peter Läderach, a CCAFS climate change specialist and co-author of the report;
“If you look at the countries that will lose out most, they’re countries like El Salvador, Nicaragua and Honduras, which have steep hills and volcanoes,” he said. “As you move up, there’s less and less area. But if you look at some South American or east African countries, you have plateaus and a lot of areas at higher altitudes, so they will lose much less.”
Without new strategies, says the study, Brazil alone can expect its current arabica production to drop by 25% by 2050.
“In Brazil, they produce coffee on the plains and don’t have any mountains so they can’t move up,” said Läderach.
Digging a little deeper, it turns out that the study doesn’t actually predict a coffee “catastrophe”.
… The regions where Arabica coffee would be least affected by higher temperatures are East Africa with the exception of Uganda and Papua New Guinea in the Pacific. Mesoamerica would be the most affected region, specifically Nicaragua and El Salvador. Since Arabica coffee is an important export of Mesoamerica, we expect severe economic impacts here. As previously suggested by Zullo [32], strongly negative effects of climate change are also expected in Brazil the world’s largest Arabica producer, as well as India and Indochina. Regions predicted to suffer intermediate impacts include the Andes, parts of southern Africa and Madagascar, and Indonesia, with significant differences among islands [17]. …
And in the conclusion:
… Some countries, such as in Mesoamerica, will lose competitiveness on global markets for quality coffee. They may need to diversify into other products to prevent adverse effects on their rural economies [28]. Other regions such as the Andes, East Africa and Indonesia may take advantage of new market opportunities. But they may require specific policies and strategies to ensure that expansion of coffee farmlands takes place in climatically, pedologically and ecologically suitable areas [17]. …
So even if the predictions of the report are correct, the main outcome will be some very poor countries will gain an economic opportunity. Some richer countries might have to choose between trying to breed a variety of coffee which is better suited to their climate, or growing something else.
Frankly it seems a bit of a stretch, to describe this outcome as a “catastrophe”.
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Guardian is doing its bit for recycling. This story has done the rounds before, thereby saving several grams of CO2 by not having to think of a new one.
Must be about time for them to recycle the climate “threat” to haggis. Goodness, the children won’t know what haggis is!
So….how do we accelerate global warming? Buy huge SUVs and run them with the AC cranked? I’ll be at the dealer tomorrow.
Isn’t it child abuse to describe haggis making to a child?
It’s obvious, rather than adapt to any change, mankind should scrap all modern prosperity and cede liberty to a world government. This new government will control the climate of the Earth and save Vanuatu and coffee. We skeptics won’t be allowed to have coffee or freedom. Vanuatu’s tourist must now row there but coffee will be served.
You’ve never seen me without my coffee in the morning. Catastrophic? not exactly, but it’s ugly. 😉
Me too 🙂
Same here, and the other extreme isn’t too pretty either (I get more done but the results are questionable) – life is a fine balancing act
You guys have been warned, so get ready to go on tea instead, the much better choice.
First they came for your coffee, then they’ll come for your tea. Be warned.
article…”change = catastrophe”.
“I did not know THAT”—-Johnny Carson (the late comedic scientist)
” Change is life. No change is death.”—-Mom. Well, that’s Mom for ya…always the sensible scientist. No research bucks for Mom!
H.R.,
Like an old friend used to tell me, you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.
:o) That tickled my funny bone, Mark.
welll the world is now reconsidering the 2’C limit as being inadequate. I think what we really need to do is have an agreement where we agree to cool the earth by 0.5’C just to be on the safe side.
Interesting that there is no mention of the period when coffee production was REALLY hit hard. During the cold period of the 1970’s . Frosts devastated coffee production in the mid 70’s with the frost of 1975 destroying more than 2/3rds of the crop and killing many trees which in turn led to a doubling of its price.
https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19770109&id=jlwqAAAAIBAJ&sjid=AlcEAAAAIBAJ&pg=5337,2319051&hl=en
With a warming climate, they’ll just have to move coffee plantations farther from the equator. For example hey’re already growing coffee in Southern California. UC Ag Extension is advising. And for super-fresh, no-transportation/low CO2 footprint, they’re promoting backyard home-growing. Of course if coffee gets expensive, you might need to get a pit bull or rottie to protect your beans while you’re at work.
goodlandorganics.com/
This study is based on obsolete models prepared over 20 years ago. I can’t figure out what CO2 concentration or temperature curves they used. These studies are prone to use inadequate data sets, which makes them fairly useless, even if one believes the IPCC story line.
Guardian:
I wonder. Who forecasts 2-2.5 degree increase in the next few (how many) decades? Where Coffea arabica grows?
I remember reading an Australian Government report that said we could expect Australian sugar cane productivity to increase 500%, but that it would be subject to competition from Brazil that could expect even greater improvements.
This was spun by Alarmists into an Australian crop disaster.
“…may require specific policies and strategies to ensure that expansion of coffee farmlands takes place in climatically, pedologically and ecologically suitable areas.”
Well, who would think of trying to grow coffee in an unsuitable place? Oh sorry, I forgot it’s academics talking about politicians. Though given the experience of, for instance, the British government and the infamous groundnut scheme (and no doubt many similar FUBARs), it may indeed be wise advice.
I was just doing a little research reading to find out if the above claimed “climate catastrophe for all coffee producers” would cause the same problems for most all tea producers.
And what I found was utterly amazing.
“DUH”, the tea producers know more about the “warming” of the climate than 97% (HA) of the Degreed expert Climate Scientists do, …… to wit (my BOLD):
The CO2 only provides …. “the food for life”, …… whereas the H2O vapor provides …. “the warmth to sustain life”.
In addition to its renowned morning energizing effect, coffee has numerous health benefits.
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/270202.php
Green tea is also a good source of antioxidants.
http://authoritynutrition.com/top-10-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-green-tea/
Coffee may be able to help you lose weight:
http://authoritynutrition.com/top-13-evidence-based-health-benefits-of-coffee/
Coffee grounds can improve soil quality. They make a great foundation for a compost heap, which may accommodate almost all of your kitchen waste, meat & oils excepted.
http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/starbucks-coffee-compost-test
I drink my coffee black, for the most part, but mix it up with cafe au lait, hot or iced, which some purists would call white coffee. However, I never add sugar – neither to coffee nor to anything else. I don’t feed the hummingbirds any more, so I have no use for sugar.
By contrast, anything coming out of the Grauniad these days must be taken with a grain of salt, something many of us over here in the colonies recognize.
Actually the coffee itself causes catastrophes in virtually all economies which become dependent on its production.
It’s a fascinating story beginning in Ethiopia, the only place where it is indigenous.
See “Uncommon Grounds”, Pendergrast, 1999.
https://www.nytimes.com/books/first/p/pendergrast-grounds.html
“Actually the coffee itself causes catastrophes in virtually all economies which become dependent on its production. ”
Anyone who becomes dependent on one commodity or product will suffer catastrophically when demand / price goes down, so that’s kinda self-evident.
But the story you linked to is actually a good read, thanks.
You are right DirkH. Because it is so profitable when it works, coffee seems to have a strong tendency to create single commodity economies where much of the workforce becomes dependent on it alone, sometimes for generations.
I googled “WHAT IS THE TEMPERATURE RANGE FOR GROWING COFFEE PLANTS?” and got a number of hits. A useful one was “http://www.ico.org/ecology.asp?section=About_Coffee”. Although the conditions are limiting, I believe that the main limiting factor is the relatively low volume of beans produced per plant, meaning that only areas with relatively low incomes are suitable for the manual aspects of producing the beans (or cherries).
Apologies for introducing serious thoughts here…..
Ian M
As a long-time resident of both Costa Rica and Colombia, and a coffee drinker, I will testify as to the intensity of labor involved in its production. I have picked coffee beans on extreme hillsides. It is no fun, especially if it has been raining. As these nations, and other coffee-producing regions improve their economies (if Warmistas don’t prevent that from happening) then the price of coffee can only go up.
Every “mountain grown” coffee bean you have ever seen or tasted was picked by the two fingers of a human being. In a cluster of coffee cherries, individual cherries ripen at different times. Therefore, the pickers have to move through a field several times over the course of several weeks. The more perfectly ripe cherries are picked, the higher the quality of the coffee, but the more time and effort needed to harvest. Indeed, the high value producers are moving into very specific microclimates, much like wine growers and setting up fair trade policies for their workers.
Mechanical harvesters can only be used in flat lands (robusta) and of course have no way to distinguish between ripe and green cherries. The result is predictable – bunker oil, but lots of it.
Look at it this way – millions of people are employed picking coffee who would otherwise have no jobs at all. Given their modest lifestyle (compared to the Starbucks consumers), picking coffee provides them a solid living with lots of time off to do other things.
It is very sensitive to local microclimates, altitude, shade or sunlight, and other environmental factors. That’s one of the reasons it has been introduced, thrived for a while, died out, and then planted elsewhere in the world so many times over the centuries.
I’ve had a small coffee farm in Nicaragua for 15 years and can’t remember a single time when the industry wasn’t in trouble for one reason or other.
Is your farm a shade, or monoculture operation?
Shade, on the side of the Mombacho Volcano near Granada.
Pero hay muchos monos en los árboles 😉
And birds too, I would imagine.
Oh yes, all with beautiful plumage…
Tom, if you come to Boquete for a cupping, look me up. Contact info at boquetehardwoods.com.
Pero, los monos no se pueden cosechar el cafe sin microprocesadores implantados… 🙂
Jajajaja. Sin tirar mierda tampoco.
I’ve been thinking of heading down there later this year. Making a note of your website.
Marco – Thanks for your site…I am a wood turner and love beautiful wood. I’ve never heard of “boquete” before. Are all the colors natural or are some of them dyed? The purple looks very much like purpleheart.
Gracias (that’s about the limit of my Spanish)!
MJ – Boquete is a town in Panama where Marko has his shop, unless I’m very mistaken.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boquete,_Chiriqu%C3%AD
Isn’t it strange that climate change only causes bad things, including worse conditions for crops?
One would think that a colder planet with low CO2 would be best for growing.
Of course it’s the complete opposite. In #1 coffee producer Brazil, the catastrophe’s to production were most often from frosts/freezes until the 1970’s. A mass migration of production moved growers closer to the equator, from Parana to Minas Gerais.
Severe freezes in 1994 still managed to hit that far north but this greatly lessened the threat of cold, as did some beneficial warming in the 1980’s/90’s.
Coffee growers suffered a severe natural drought in Brazil in 2014, with that region having experienced severe droughts in the past and in fact, the increase in CO2 allowed coffee to do much better than expected during the hot/dry weather.
Ironically, even though almost all crops benefit greatly from increased CO2, studies show that coffee, because it is more of a woody stemmed plant, really a tree that benefits more than almost all the others.
The increase from 280ppm to 400ppm has likely increased growth of coffee plants by close to 50% under many conditions.
http://www.co2science.org/data/plant_growth/dry/dry_subject_c.php
http://www.web-books.com/Classics/ON/B0/B701/20MB701.html
I forecast crop yields for global crops, including coffee for a living. The author of this study is living in the world of models and climate change/global warming funding. In the real world, where real coffee is grown under real weather/climate and CO2 conditions, this guy would be out of a job.
None of these catastrophic coffee losses will happen if their predictions of global warming are wrong. And they are wrong. Enumerating places that will suffer as though the predicted losses were real is an asininity. Not only is warming missing today, it has been missing for 18 years. At the same time, atmospheric carbon dioxide has steadily increased and yet it has been unable to cause any of the warming predicted by the greenhouse theory of Arrhenius. This is an unquestionably false prediction and with it the Arrhenius greenhouse theory, in use by IPCC, is made invalid. It belongs in the waste basket of history, the final resting place of phlogiston. The correct greenhouse theory to use is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory that came out in 2007. Its prediction is simple: addition of carbon dioxide to air does not warm the air. As a matter of fact, addition of CO2 to air does not do anything at all even if you double the amount. From this it follows that the so-called “climate sensitivity” is a big, fat zero. There is more to it. Start working on Miskolczi’s math if you want to fully understand his theory. That theory, and not some cockamamie nineteenth century relic, is what governs our climate.
Is there anything CO2 can’t do?
Get the Chilcot Report released?
If only there were some miraculous, international, self-organizing mechanism for effortlessly adapting to whatever change may come, while allocating resources in the most economic and beneficial manner for mankind … if only we had something, like … I don’t know … the free market.
“In Brazil, they produce coffee on the plains and don’t have any mountains so they can’t move up,”
They can’t move up, but they can move away from the equator.
“They can’t move up, but they can move away from the equator”
Moving coffee plantations back south, away from the equator would be the worst move, making them vulnerable to the biggest threat………..frost. This is why they moved towards the equator in the first place, where they are now. Frequent, catastrophic frost/freezes for decades hit coffee growers farther south.
In fact, if they were in those old, farther from the equator locations, in the Summer of 2013, there would have been major damage from the extreme cold that only hit the most extreme south locations of the coffee belt.
Fact is, they are just fine in Brazil at the current location which has the perfect soil/altitude and climate for growing Arabica coffee.
Don’t let this bogus study with bad/wrong assumptions cause you to think otherwise:
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/agriculture/environment.htm
“Without new strategies, says the study, Brazil alone can expect its current arabica production to drop by 25% by 2050.”
People that make ludicrous statements like that and put out junk agronomy research studies like this should be held accountable, not rewarded with funding to do more studies that are completely detached from the real world.
“In fact, if they were in those old, farther from the equator locations, in the Summer of 2013, there would have been major damage from the extreme cold that only hit the most extreme south locations of the coffee belt.”
Excuse me, July 2013 was our Summer, here in the Northern Hemisphere but it was the Winter in the Southern Hemisphere/Brazil.
Far Southern Brazil had hard freezes and even snow in July 2013 in places that used to grow coffee from the 1970’s and prior.
In the current, farther north location, there was very little damage(limited to the far south)
2 freezes early in their Winter of 1994, however did push far enough towards the equator to severely damage coffee at these farther north locations…………….so they are not completely without risk of cold damage.
The one listed below in 2000 was very minor.
http://www.coffeeresearch.org/market/frosthistory.htm
You will note the numerous frosts in the 50’s-70’s………during modest global cooling and the farther south location for coffee growing.
The movement north, towards the equator and some help from global warming in the 1980’s/90’s, as well as the increase in CO2 all contributed in bumper coffee harvests thru much of that period.
The almost freezes in the Winter of 2013, were a result of a shift in the natural cycle, back to one similar to where we were in during the global cooling cycle in the 1950’s-70’s.
This is having a profound effect on global temperatures, including a stalling out of the warming in the 80’s/90’s.
Here is the conclusion that I’ve come to with Climate Change:
Food will grow in some places not others
Animals, sea life, and humans will die
It’ll be hot in some places, cold in others. Some places will experience drought and others flood.
Seriously, doesn’t everyone not see that this stuff happens anyways?!
Let me know when there is going to be a beer catastrophe. That will get my attention
From the link to Pendergrast above:
“By 1777 the hot beverage had become entirely too popular for Frederick the Great, who issued a manifesto in favor of Germany’s more traditional drink: ‘It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the like amount of money that goes out of the country in consequence. My people must drink beer. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were his ancestors.'”
Or a donut disaster.