Approximately two billion cups of coffee people drink every day around the world. The coffee industry provides 210,000 jobs, and about 100 million farmers around the world depend on it. From instant coffee to a gourmet latte with oat milk, coffee is big business. However, his future is in jeopardy.

Writes about it The Telegraph.

A recent Christian Aid report warns that climate change could reduce the area of land available for coffee cultivation by 54 percent by 2100, even if global temperatures are maintained on internationally agreed targets.

On May 17, the World Meteorological Organization said that by 2027 temperatures could exceed pre-industrial levels by 1.5 ° C. This is unpleasant news for producers and coffee lovers.

According to Dr Aaron Davies, global coffee and climate change expert and head of coffee research at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew coffee is one of the most researched plants when it comes to climate change. Nearly 150 studies have been published about it and the prospect seems terrifying.

Even if commitments to reduce carbon emissions are met, a 2022 study in the journal Nature shows that coffee production will still decline rapidly in countries that account for 75 percent of the world's Arabica coffee supply.

"It's not something that needs to happen in the future, it's already happening," says Dr. Davis.

The world's largest producers Brazil and Vietnam faced adverse weather conditions only this year: extreme heat and drought in Vietnam, heavy rains in Brazil. "Last year, coffee crops were affected by drought in many countries, and long-term climate change can cause periods of drought to become longer, more severe and more regular," explains Dr. Davies. In Uganda, exports fell by about 20 percent in 2022.

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The coffee tree is a fastidious plant that needs the right conditions to flourish. World production focuses on only two of the 130 known species; The lack of genetic diversity makes it particularly vulnerable to diseases and pests.

Arabica is a tropical plant that is comfortable at an average annual temperature of about 19°C. It is considered to taste better and accounts for 56 percent of coffee production.

Robusta is 43 percent, and it can grow at low altitudes and at higher average annual temperatures, but is mostly reserved for instant coffee and blending.

Coffee can only be grown in the "bean belt," between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and it needs enough rain and heat to thrive. When this changes – as happens in most coffee growing areas – it can harm the crop.

The consequences of pests and diseases, which are often exacerbated by changing weather, are also worrying. Arabica is particularly vulnerable to leaf rust, a fungal disease that retards plant growth and yield. It destroyed most of the harvest of Sri Lanka in the late nineteenth century and hit South America hard in the early twenty-first century.

"This remains a major obstacle to coffee production," says Dr Davies, while coffee berry disease and coffee wilt disease are hampering Arabica and Robusta production in Africa.

To preserve your morning coffee, scientists are accelerating the search for new types and varieties of coffee, those that may be more resistant to drought or disease or that can be grown at higher temperatures.

Érico Hiller

One such species is Coffea stenophylla, a rare coffee from West Africa. In 2018, Davis was part of the team that rediscovered this plant in the jungles of Sierra Leone – it hasn't been seen in the wild since 1954.

A study published in 2021 showed that tasters compared its resistance to high temperatures and incredible taste with the best Arabica – this can lead to the fact that it will become the coffee of the future.

Dr. Davis is also working with colleagues and farmers in Uganda and South Sudan on another species known as excelsa, first discovered in Central Africa at the turn of the twentieth century. He never entered the mass market. According to farmers who use it, Excelsa withstands higher temperatures and drier conditions than robusta and, according to many, tastes better.

In Brazil, farmers are very worried. At the Fazenda Ambiental Fortaleza (FAF), a 150-year-old coffee farm in the hills hours from São Paulo, Felipe Croce and his family turned the farm into an open-air laboratory where Croce experiments with new climate methods.

Monkeys and toucans live in the trees; At night, wolves are heard near the hamlet. It's more like a nature reserve than a farm, more of a jungle than a neat monoculture often seen in Brazil, but the FAF is behind the best coffee in the country.

Croce says that in 2021, Brazil experienced one of the worst frosts on record, causing an instant shortage of coffee and a price increase of more than 100 percent year after year.

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In the FAF, coffee is grown in the shade, under banana trees or even in the forest. Most Brazilian coffee is grown directly in the sun, where it is harvested faster, but growing in shade helps lower temperatures, can become an animal haven, helps absorb more carbon, and is a natural environment for coffee. Banana trees also protect it from frost.

However, changing farming methods can be expensive and risky for farmers, while growing on new land threatens deforestation. FAF works with over 300 family farms to help them grow and export their crops, with coffee shipped worldwide, particularly to the UK.

The disease-resistant varieties of Arabica and Robusta, developed by genetic scientists, are crucial to fighting disease and climate change. New varieties have been successfully introduced at the FAF, including some of their own developed ones. Pact also encourages the farmers it works with to grow climate-resistant varieties.

Earlier we wrote that coffee can have both positive and negative effects on the body. Norwegian scientists tell about how the effect of coffee on the human body depends on the method of its preparation, who have been studying the effect of coffee on the body for more than 20 years and have identified the most harmful and healthy ways to prepare it.

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