If you wake up every day to a hot brew, you might want to read this – climate change is no joke, and now it is coming for your coffee. Yes, you read that right.
According to reports, climate change is triggering extreme weather events across the world, which is further changing the environment and affecting the global food supply since it disrupts the cultivation of food crops. A new study says that regions producing coffee, avocado, cashews will be severely affected as the planet continues to get hotter.
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The study was published in PLOS One and claims that the suitability of many important production areas of coffee, cashews and avocados will decrease with climate change. According to researchers, the evaluation of climate change impacts on biophysical sustainability is vital for developing adaptation measures and selecting appropriate varieties or crops. Areas with low temperatures will be significantly impacted and witness a reduction of 76 percent in Brazil and a 63 percent fall in Colombia.
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This will further make coffee-growing areas less suitable for agriculture as researchers studied the influence of climate change on soil properties in the region. Based on the research, coffee regions in Brazil, Indonesia, Vietnam and Columbia will be reduced by 50 percent by 2050.
“We used climate outputs of 14 global circulation models based on three emission scenarios to model the future (2050) climate change impacts on the crops both globally and in the main producing countries,” researchers from the Institute of Natural Resource Sciences, Zurich University of Applied Sciences said in the paper.
The study analysed climatic factors such as long dry seasons, mean temperatures (high and low), low minimum temperatures and annual precipitation (high and low), which showed that coffee proved to be the most vulnerable, with climate impacts dominating in all main producing regions.
“The study reveals that climate change adaptation will be necessary for most major producing regions of all three crops. At high latitudes and high altitudes, however, they may all profit from increasing minimum temperatures,” the research found.
Needless to say, since coffee is already a commodity high in demand, the prices will also significantly rise once the production comes to an all-time low.
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