Coffee Information | Coffee crisis, mankind's favorite drink is about to enter history.

Abstract: coffee is also a kind of plant, and the ever-changing weather has a great impact on coffee cultivation in recent years.

Droughts, floods, infectious diseases and climate changes have posed a great threat to human coffee addiction. Do we really have to face the days when there is no coffee?

When we read the newspaper and pick up the latte or espresso on the table, climate change seems far away, but thousands of kilometers away, the origin of coffee beans is experiencing waves.

Professor Frank, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, recently did research here in Chiapas, Mexico, where coffee beans are famous. One interviewee said that it had never rained so hard before. Now the output of those plants has decreased a lot, and leaves and fruits have fallen early because of moisture.

Sharp changes in temperature hurricane landslides hit

It used to be an excellent environment for growing coffee beans, with stable temperature and humidity, but the temperature suddenly began to hinder plant growth and become so hot that the fruit dried up before ripening, followed by sudden hurricanes and landslides. The soil sometimes even engulfed the plants. "the climate is really strange, and things we haven't seen before are happening all the time," said a farmer. "

Coffee is coming to an end.

These problems are not just in Mexico. Coffee farmers in South America, Asia and Africa are watching as droughts, torrential rains, pests and plagues continue to hit their crops as global warming.

Such a problem will soon affect coffee shops near your home. The world drinks an average of 2 billion cups of coffee a day. How can we continue to satisfy people's appetite in a turbulent climate? If one day the supply of coffee exceeds the demand, how are we going to face it?

Many people worry that what we are doing will do more harm to the climate, and more people think that it is time for humans to change their tastes; they may want to try a few more mouthfuls while there is still a chance, because the coffee is coming to an end.

Frail Arabica coffee

There are two kinds of commercial coffee, one is Arabica coffee, the other is bitter robusta coffee, and Arabica's multiple flavors make it the most popular coffee in the world, accounting for more than 70% of the market.

Those high quality also have to pay a price. Compared with Robusta, most Arabica is grown in the mountains of Ethiopia, making him less genetically diverse and therefore particularly sensitive to climate change. Arabica must be at the right temperature (18-22 degrees Celsius) and moderate and regular rainfall to survive. Bonn of Humboldt University in Berlin pointed out, "it can only grow in a very special environment, and only a few parts of the world are suitable for cultivation, which is very different from other crops, such as corn, a plant that has a history of thousands of years." can quickly adapt to almost any environment. "

Unpredictable weather conditions caused by global warming make it impossible for meticulous Arabica coffee to survive in such an environment. In Mexico, for example, torrential rain caused by rising temperatures has prevented coffee seeds from sprouting in the soil. Megrah, from the Institute of Terrestrial ecosystems at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, explained: "Coffee is very fragile and blossoms for only 48 hours, so if there is heavy rain at this time, the crops in the whole area will be destroyed."

Heat and drought ravaged infectious diseases

Other regions face the opposite problem: drought, and when Oxfam interviewed coffee makers in the Ruwenzori Mountains in Uganda, they reported that the dry climate caused the crops to dry up before they blossomed and bear fruit, even if they bear fruit. It's small and flat. In addition, the hot weather has ravaged the natural enemies of coffee everywhere, such as leaf miner, coffee berry borer, powdery worm or leaf rust, which have made plants suffer a lot. The most recent was during the 2013 leaf rust epidemic, when harvests in central America fell by 20%, and such incidents are likely to become more common and more serious with global warming.

It is not easy to calculate the long-term cost, and this phenomenon is difficult to estimate individually. According to one team, the yield per hectare in a coffee area in Tanzania has fallen from 500 kg to 300 kg since the 1960s. More importantly, this is closely related to the local temperature rising by an average of 0.3 degrees Celsius every decade and the continuous decline in rainfall.

All this paints a bleak prospect for coffee. Based on the latest climate information, Bonn calculates that the area of land suitable for growing Arabica coffee may be halved by 2050, especially in coffee producing areas such as Vietnam, India and Central America. The blow will be particularly severe.

Coffee prices will rise by 25% in 2050

The result is a double whammy for farmers and coffee lovers, and we can expect coffee to become a luxury product in the future, and coffee prices could rise by 25% by 2050, according to Bonn's doctoral thesis. He believes that with technological advances, the prices of other crops may become cheaper and production will continue to grow, and if these factors are taken into account, the real price of coffee may rise by 50% or more.

As a result, farmers will not be able to benefit from it, and after years of chaos, they may switch to other more stable crops, Bonn said. "We took the results of the study to coffee producers for reference, and they all said that this is indeed the case. Some farmers in the low-altitude areas of Central America have given up coffee and switched to rubber."

Profitable coffee cultivation will not be interrupted

As long as it is profitable, the market we give up will soon be filled, but it will do great harm to the environment. Megrah marked out the farmland suitable for Arabica coffee on the map, and she found that in the worst case, we must destroy 2.2 million hectares of tropical rainforest to meet the expected demand, which is a great loss to the biodiversity of nature.

Of course, there are better solutions. Considering the problem of tolerance, Robusta coffee is more adaptable to climate change. Megrah's sample even points out that the production area suitable for growing Robusta coffee will expand as the temperature rises; in this way, as long as people change their taste, they can easily solve the current difficulties, save the coffee industry and save countless forests. She hopes that the packaging of coffee beans will be marked as coming from ecologically fragile producing areas in the future, and consumers will be aware of the environmental cost and take it into account when they buy it.

Many people hope to ensure coffee production through the improvement of coffee growing technology, and coffee and climate organizations help dozens of different coffee producers to discuss ways to solve the challenges they are facing.

Retain the advantages of both sides and cultivate new varieties

One option is to graft Arabica coffee onto Robusta's roots to see if it can successfully resist drought and retain people's favorite fragrance. In addition, selective breeding can also combine the advantages of the two varieties, Megrah added: "people are working on this, but we are still not sure when a new variety will be developed."

It is estimated that there are as many as 25 million coffee farmers and coffee merchants waiting for us to find an answer. Until then, farmers have no choice but to face daily uncertainty, which is a very uncomfortable situation. Although most farmers will prepare for heavy rain in advance according to TV weather forecasts, they still feel helpless about situations beyond their control.

For some farmers, the weather has become a taboo topic. Frank's interviewees told him: "We rarely talk about climate because we know what's going on, but there's nothing we can do about it."