Climate change affects the yield and quality of Ethiopia's Yega Xuefei boutique coffee beans

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Climate change is affecting Ethiopia, Africa's largest coffee producer, according to a new study by an international research team. In the future, the production of Ethiopia's boutique coffee beans will continue to decline, and the flavor will become more and more insipid.

The Potsdam Climate impact Institute (PIK), who conducted the study, said: "Climate change will have mixed results for Ethiopian coffee. According to the Institute's simulation experiments, the areas suitable for growing commercial beans may gradually expand by 2090. But at the same time, if Ethiopia's climate change continues to worsen, the area where Ethiopian boutique coffee is grown may gradually shrink.

The researchers studied and analyzed five different coffee varieties in Ethiopia under different scenario simulations based on 19 weather factors, including average temperature, annual rainfall and seasonality. Studies have shown that if the temperature in Ethiopia continues to warm, the ripening rate of coffee fruit will be faster and faster. The lack of temperature difference between day and night slows down the ripening rate of coffee fruit, which shortens the time for coffee fruit to produce more flavor, which not only affects the quality of coffee fruit, but also affects the flavor performance of coffee beans.

On the other hand, the increase in rainfall is only good for the production of commercial coffee beans as a whole, but not necessarily a good thing for boutique coffee beans. The continuous rainfall has the opportunity to have a serious impact on the boutique coffee producing areas, and the worst-case scenario is that the Yegashafi region has the opportunity to reduce its acreage by 40% at the end of the 21st century.

Climate change will not only affect the output and quality of Ethiopian boutique coffee, but also affect Ethiopia's coffee economy. The researchers say that if Ethiopia's coffee-growing areas are unable to grow high-quality coffee because of climate change, it could have serious consequences for small farmers in the region. Because once they switch to commercial coffee, their competitors will be large-scale companies, such as coffee growers in Brazil and Vietnam, and lower costs also drive down sales prices. For countries where coffee exports account for about 1 per cent of Ethiopia's agricultural exports, this can be fatal.

But the researchers involved also said that the results of the study are only a worst-case scenario and that there are ways to stop the worsening trend. It is now known that different coffee varieties will have an impact according to different temperature, space, soil and other factors, so we can then plan corresponding measures for each region according to different changes, so as to improve the impact of the changes.

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