Ethiopia's Coffee Is the Latest Victim of Climate Change (theverge.com)

According to a study published today in Nature Plants, by the end of this century, increasing temperatures could make it impossible to grow coffee in about half of Ethiopia's coffee-growing regions. "That's because Arabica coffee trees (which are grown in Ethiopia) require pretty mild temperatures to survive, ideally between 59 to 75 degree Fahrenheit," reports The Verge. "Climate projections show that Ethiopia will generally become warmer and drier, and that means that 40 to 60 percent of areas where coffee is currently grown won't be suitable to grow the beans, the study says." From the report: In fact, climate change is already hurting Ethiopia's coffee growers: days and nights are already warmer, and the weather is more unpredictable and extreme. Hot days are hotter and rainy days are rainier. That leads to more unpredictable harvests and it hurts the local economy. Ethiopia is Africa's biggest coffee producer and the world's fifth largest coffee exporter, with 15 million Ethiopians living off coffee farming. Climate change risks disrupting the country's future. But there is a way Ethiopia can brace for its brewing troubles. The study found that rising temperatures will turn swaths of land at higher elevation into just the right places to grow coffee in the future. In fact, coffee farming could increase four fold if plantations are moved uphill, the study says. But to do that, the country needs to prepare: millions of farmers can't just take their crops and move to land they don't own. You need careful planning.

Comments

Cheap coffee products

[AHuxley]

hurts the local economy.
Coffee production in Vietnam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Vietnam invested in a lot of different farming crops, so did a lot of other nations. A global flood of cheap and quality coffee now exists from many different nations.
Other nations have learned how to do all the different coffee crops and are selling on the open market.
Lots of nations saw coffee prices and helped their farmers into a cash crop. Some made quality, some went for a lot of low cost production.
Consumers want a low cost product too, so costs are been pushed down. A low price still keeps farmers in work so different nations flood the coffee market with well planned plantations.
Other nations did the planning, used their best experts over the years and can now produce at a lower cost.
Its not the weather, its just classic competition and having much better experts.

Re:Correct!

[hey!]

Actually, you've got the wrong end of the stick here when you're talking about "extrapolation". If you look at the instrumental record from the 1940s to the mid 70s, the world actually cooled.

This was because of industrial sulfate aerosol emissions, which increases the Earth's albedo. This effect was understood in the 1950s, which was why scientists expected the Earth to continue cooling. Arrhenius's CO2 driven warming theories had been discredited for over half a century because of two mistaken beliefs: (1) that CO2's IR absorption band was the same as water vapor's, so that it coud not materially affect temperature and (2) atmospheric CO2 was in equilibrium with ocean CO2. Both these beliefs were proven false in the late 50s, so from 1967 until 1980 or so the question was whether CO2 driven warming or sulfate driven cooling would predominate.

Until the mid 70s sulfates prevailed, however two additional developments caused a shift in the scientific consensus. First, much more data was collected about the Earth's atmosphere. Second, the availability of computers allowed us to actually calculate the relative effects of CO2 and sulfates, and they predicted an imminent reversal in the temperature trends of the past three decades.

This is as good as scientific confirmation of a theory gets: a counter-intuitive prediction that proves to be true. This is why by the 90s the overwhelming majority of climate scientists had confidence in at least the broad picture the models were predicting.