NBC News recently published an article asserting that climate change is driving up coffee prices by adversely affecting production titled Your daily cup of coffee could get more expensive because of climate change. Production data proves this claim blatantly false.
NBC News writes:
The price of arabica coffee beans, the high-quality beans found in most restaurants and shops, spiked this month, recently jumping to $3.50 a pound.
…
And today, experts say, climate change is to blame.
“We’ve seen significant drought in some of the key coffee-growing areas in the world, places like Brazil, which is the largest coffee exporter in the world,” said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University.
…
“We’re going to see these types of [climate] events just get more frequent into the future. And so we have to start taking this seriously and make investments in agricultural research and development to be able to mitigate and tackle the impacts of climate change on our agricultural production and agricultural system,” Ortega said.
“One impact of this is a rise in cost, which then gets translated to a rise in price for consumers,” he added.
NBC’s article attributes recent coffee price increases to climate change by pointing to specific weather events. This approach wrongly conflates short-term weather phenomena with long-term climate patterns. As discussed at Climate at a Glance, weather refers to short-term atmospheric conditions, while climate denotes long-term averages and trends. Attributing isolated weather events directly to climate change without considering broader climatic data is misleading and scientifically unsound, especially when long-term weather trends show no worsening conditions in coffee growing regions.
NBC’s story also ignores substantial data demonstrating that global coffee production has increased significantly over the past four decades, a fact that Climate Realism has addressed multiple times, highlighting the fact that coffee production has been resilient and even thriving despite concerns over climate change.
Repeated analyses show that both coffee and cocoa have set production records multiple times during the recent period of slight warming, contradicting assertions that climate change is driving price increases.
For example, global coffee production has seen substantial growth over the past 40 years, as data from U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reveals, with countries like Vietnam experiencing a more than 1,500 percent rise in production between 1992 and 2022. Vietnam is not alone. Almost every coffee growing region has experienced significant growth, as the graph below shows:
This upward trend underscores the adaptability and resilience of coffee cultivation practices, even amid the gradual warming experienced globally.
NBC’s portrayal of climate change as a primary driver of rising coffee prices reflects a bias by the media outlet toward blaming nearly every bad thing that occurs on climate change. NBC wrongly aggregates short-term weather events and long-term climate trends, and more importantly, ignores the fact that coffee production has increased significantly over recent decades, regularly setting records for production. Rather than looking at actual data, NBC News relied on “expert opinion” without any factual basis. Such sloppy reporting lacks due diligence and fails to provide a comprehensive view of the factors influencing coffee prices, including economic dynamics and agricultural practices. NBC News completely failed to consider these data and variables, instead resorting to a tired and worn-out false climate catastrophe narrative.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
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Google “world production graph” of any food “avocado” to “zucchini”
and you will find increasing production numbers over the decades.
The so called legacy press is committing fraud when we are told
that this and that food crop will suffer due to climate change.
It’s kind of counter intuitive that a warm weather plant wouldn’t like it warm.
Only “kind of”? Maybe somebody can explain why so many people
believe that a warmer world constitutes a “Climate Crisis”
I sometimes hazard to omit this: /s.
The biggest scare is melting Antarctica flooding coastal areas. Not going to happen anytime soon, and when it does happen, it will not be due to CO2.
Should check yield too. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coffee-yields?tab=chart&country=OWID_WRL~OWID_SAM~OWID_ASI~OWID_AFR~USA
Yes. As WUWT articles in the past have noted, yields for just about every kind of crop are increasing. Yields are the key to proving increases due to climate. Production could imply more investment and more acreage under cultivation.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/?s=crop+yields
China has overtaken U.S. in production of coffee as it has become a status symbol there. Anthony’s graph shows its phenomenal increase through the decades of the 80’s, 90’s and thereafter. Starbucks’ arrival spawned knock-off shops everywhere. As a tourist in the 80’s, I had to drink tea with meals.
I suspect there has been a large world-wide increase of coffee consumption..
… and supply is struggling to keep up… hence price increases.
Searching for stats to back this up, but haven’t found any up-to-date yet.
The Covid thingy also caused disruption in both supply and demand.
Needs more research.
Up in the USA:
Daily coffee consumption at 20-year high, up nearly 40%
Thanks, I keep finding Aussie stats that end in 2020/21.. very inconsistent because of Covid.
Lots more coffee drunk at home, less in cafes etc..
The USA data does seem to indicate my hunch might be correct. 🙂
Here’s one that will make a big difference
Also found a comment that India is also increasing it coffee intake substantially.
Two biggest nations in the world increasing consumption.. gunna have to get growin’ !
STORY TIP
I haven’t seen Susan Crockford posts for awhile and just saw a BBC report on Churchill bears. So,, I checked the Polar Bear Science site. She changed gears back in September.
Climate Change…
Causing Rising Coffee Prices???
Ever hear of…
…Inflation
…Bidenflation
…Intermittent Renewables driving up Energy Prices (Energy costs affect every aspect of production from manufacturing to Transportation to retail operating expenses)
I wonder how many use CO2 back-radiation to make their coffee ? 😉
Greenhouse drip could become all the rage.
Of course the real inflation that the Biden administration definitely didn’t cause could have nothing at all to do with the price of any commodity product.
Neither could increased shipping costs due to port difficulties, cargo priorities, piracy or other route interruptions, or fuel prices. And absolutely not international conflict or civil unrest.
https://www.gcrmag.com/how-covid-19-has-changed-the-coffee-supply-chain/
Yep, absolutely MUST be human CO2… you know, that substance that all plants must have, to grow. !
Considering that they use CO2 to decaffeinate coffee, I’m surprised they aren’t stating Climate Change acting to decaffeinate coffee! Our children simply won’t know what caffeine is.
Not to mention minimum wage increases. Labor, transportation, etc., are all part of the price per pound.
Apparently, NBC News can’t tell the difference between a climate expert and a food professor.
One would think that people would get tired of fake news eventually, especially when it is so obvious.
and a food professor.
odd.. I first read that as “food processor” 🙂
And once again, I must withhold my alumni donation.
It’s trash like this that is sending the MSM into a death spiral. Their days are nearly over.
Faster please.
Was it better 50 years ago? Was it much better 200 years ago?
Without doing the math, from the graph of world coffee production by region, it’s pretty clear that production varies by upwards of a million tons give or take from year to year. For every increase, there is a following decrease in production, and vice versa. This is true of all agricultural commodities, indeed the prices of most basic foodstuffs like grains and eggs and milk and meats can and do vary by much larger proportions from year to year.
“Climate” does not “change” from year to year. Weather does.
Additionally, there are many factors that affect both coffee production as well as prices, including changes in demand; national and regional market variations; national political policies including subsidies, price supports, environmental restrictions (pesticides, herbicides); infrastructure issues (the ability to harvest and transport products from producers to consumers); geopolitical conditions (wars, embargoes, financial sanctions, etc.); pests, plant diseases, and other biological effects; and of course the ever present commodity markets where speculators can drive the prices up or down based upon expectations for the future or temporary existing conditions.
To blame the prices of any single commodity – out of hundreds of worldwide commodities – on a single factor, weather, is about as dumb as blaming the functioning of the Earth’s complex climate system on a single control knob, CO2.
Simpletons always offer simplistic answers to complex questions.
The world has been trained to want and expect simple answers, regardless of the question. This mind bending has been going on for at least half a century. Probably well beyond the 50 years of my personal awareness.
«The world»?
*sipping my coffee*
The rule of thumb for the entire merry cartel seems to be «The weather is not climate! Unless it’s a bad weather!»
Why “even”? There is no basis for speculating that a warmer climate is worse for production of a tropical plant. And BTW, it does not get warmer in tropics anyway.