Grist posted a story blaming climate change for a recent rise in coffee prices. This is false, coffee production and yields have improved amid modest warming. As a result, Grist must seek another cause for higher prices.
In the story, “Climate change has sent coffee prices soaring. Trump’s tariffs will send them higher,” Grist staff writer, Frida Garza, spends 85 percent of her story describing how the tariffs President Donald Trump is imposing on Vietnam will likely affect a recently developed artisanal coffee company, using organically grown Vietnamese Robusta blends, and then generalizing the claims to the impacts on coffee from other growing regions like Brazil. Note, despite climate change leading in the title, so far the story only discusses the potential impacts of tariffs on future coffee prices.
Only the last section of the story deals with climate change, and then only to imply that climate change has caused recent droughts that have affected some coffee growers.
“Hartley added that one of the impacts of droughts on coffee growers is that younger farmers worried about the future are considering leaving the business,” writes Garza. “Regardless of whether the U.S. imposes prohibitive tariffs on individual coffee-growing countries, climate change is already taking a toll on this workforce.”
Except in the misleading title of the story, nowhere does Garza specifically argue that climate change has caused droughts, with attendant coffee shortages, resulting in higher prices. Which is good, as far as it goes, since there is no evidence climate change is causing worsening droughts or causing a decline in coffee production or harvests. As such, one can only surmise Garza used “climate change” as a hook to snag readers attention.
Concerning drought, Climate Realism has posted more than 100 stories rebutting false media claims that climate change has made the occurrences of drought more frequent or severe, here, here, and for Brazil, here, for instance.
Garza can’t draw support for her suggestion that climate change is causing worsening drought conditions from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, either. In its most recent report, the 2021 Sixth Assessment report, the IPCC distinguishes four categories of drought: hydrological, meteorological, ecological, and agricultural. The IPCC finds no evidence climate change has increased the number, duration, or intensity of hydrological or meteorological droughts, and it has only medium confidence it has “contributed to changes in agricultural and ecological droughts and has led to an increase in the overall affected land area.”
Even for ecological and agricultural droughts the data is a mixed bag. The IPCC divides the world into 47 separate regions of study when analyzing drought trends, and its data suggest ecological and agricultural drought may have increased during the period of modest warming in 12 of those 47 regions. However, in only two of those regions does the IPCC have even “medium confidence” for any human role in the observed increase. For the remaining regions experiencing a possible increase in droughts, the IPCC has low confidence human activities have had any discernible impact.
Climate change can’t be blamed for causing a phenomenon, increasing drought frequency and severity, that is not happening.
Nor is there evidence in either coffee production data or price data that climate change is causing a crisis.
In response to the Grist article and one from earlier in the year published by the New York Times, climate researcher Bjorn Lomborg posted a short but thorough refutation on X, showing that prices in recent years and decades are neither records, nor even higher then average when compared to the past. (see below)
Lomborg then provided this helpful chart:
Dozens of articles posted at Climate Realism examine and debunk previous false claims made in myriad mainstream media stories that climate change has caused a decline in coffee yields and production, resulting in rising prices. Data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization show relatively steady gains in coffee yields and production in Vietnam, Brazil, and for the world as a whole between 1994 and 2023, with new records for both being set with some regularity. (see the graph below).
Since coffee production and yields have increased dramatically overtime, it is simply false to link higher coffee prices to climate change induced impacts on production. During the recent period of slight global warming, coffee, like almost every other crop, has seen gains due to the fertilization effect of higher CO2 and improved growing conditions. Since climate change isn’t disrupting coffee production, it can’t be blamed for any rise in prices.
In the end, despite the title, Garza’s article is mostly speculation about potential future impacts of the Trump administration’s tariffs on future coffee prices, with a little climate alarm unjustifiably thrown in for no identifiable reason. The story as a whole is pure carnival sideshow prognostication. Will tariffs cause higher coffee prices? Maybe, maybe not. But whatever has contributed to recent increases in coffee prices, prices that are still below historic averages and highs, and there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change has anything to do with it. That is the truth. Based on the evidence of this story, Grist is evidently not in the business of telling the truth.
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., is the Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy and the managing editor of Environment & Climate News. In addition to directing The Heartland Institute’s Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy, Burnett puts Environment & Climate News together, is the editor of Heartland’s Climate Change Weekly email, and the host of the Environment & Climate News Podcast.
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Raising Coffee Prices?
Climate Change??
NOPE…
Climate Change Policies!!!
Say it isn’t soooo
My Coffee’s a Life Saver
If you’re anything like my wife, it saves other people’s lives.
I recall reading an article recently that one of the reasons for a slight increase in coffee prices is an increase in demand from China.
Apparently a lot of the younger people have taken a liking to coffee.. emulating Starbucks etc.
Supply and demand??
Coffee price going up because China has discovered a taste for it. Same with Olive oil.
Climate change? Jeezuz Christ, when will this crap end?
“As such, one can only surmise Garza used “climate change” as a hook to snag readers attention.”
Sorry, Mr Burnett. Both you and Lomborg are missing the bleeding obvious. It’s not lazy, or a “hook”, it’s propaganda, plain and simple. They know most people won’t read the articles, but will be convinced by the lie of the headline. That’s how propaganda works. No substance necessary.
But the prices will go up due to the coffee plants being frozen due to frost in Brazil.
I wasn’t aware that Glowbull warming causes heavy frosts.
Yup. This is from Cap Allon’s site today:
COFFEE: THE CANARY IN THE COOLING COAL MINEBrazil’s Cooxupé —the world’s largest coffee cooperative, based in Guaxupé, Minas Gerais— has reported warehouses running at just 60% capacity at the close of the 2025 harvest. Normally those warehouses are full.
Coffee is the canary in the coal mine. Arabica, the dominant variety, survives only in a narrow thermal band — slip a few degrees colder and yields collapse. In 1975 a single frost wiped out two-thirds of Brazil’s crop overnight and rewired global supply.
In times of cooling, staples like wheat and maize can survive — they might not thrive, but a freeze or two is’t going to destroy the entire yield. The likes of coffee, cocoa, and sugarcane are trapped in thin equatorial belts, and a dip in temperature, a frost, and the crop is dead.
History backs this. During the Little Ice Age, frost hammered European vineyards and cash crops long before grains faced collapse. Luxuries went first. Warm-adapted crops are fragile because they rely on climatic stability — the first thing cooling takes away.
Cooxupé’s warehouses sitting half-empty is an early signal of systemic stress in warm-band agriculture. Brazil’s coffee has been struggling with anomalously cool temperatures and destructive frosts since 2021. Prices are rising, but they will soon spike hard. Supply chains will wobble. And if the planet keeps tilting toward cold, coffee won’t just be costly, it will be out of reach for many.
The “Indiana Jones of Coffee,” analyst Maja Wallengren, has been warning of exactly this fragility. Once coffee tips outside its sweet spot, the fall isn’t gradual. It’s a cliff. Coffee could be telling us something: The COLD TIMES are returning.
Here’s the specification for KC coffee futures:
The New York and Virginia delivery points are par; the New Orleans, Miami and Houston delivery points are at a discount of 0.50 cents per pound; and the Bremen/Hamburg, Antwerp and Barcelona delivery points are at a discount of 1.25 cents per pound.
A point is 0.01 cents per lb. The recent rise in price reflects attempts to secure supply that is already in US warehouses, and thus not subject to tariffs. It is probable that the futures specification may have to be amended to ensure greater parity between tariff inclusive prices in the US and Europe. Alternatively, if European tariffs are lower then the contract may cease to provide delivery to the US, which would then be via off exchange contracts at a premium reflecting the tariff differential. There are already location differences, partly motivated by freight cost differentials.
The Trading Economics commentary on the coffee market:
I get it now. A burning earth with boiling oceans causes early frosts!
Coffee plants are native to tropical regions, where temperatures are consistently warm.
coffee plants are particularly sensitive to temperatures below 50°F (10°C). Prolonged exposure to such temperatures can stress the plant, weakening its immune system and making it more susceptible to pests and diseases.
When the coffee plants get colder or freeze they die. That is when the prices go up.
Swiss monopolies are.