Drought in Brazil, Vietnam highlight climate change's impact on coffee: experts

[GoneFishin]

Drought in Brazil, Vietnam highlight climate change's impact on coffee: experts

Climate change is driving and intensifying extreme weather in the world’s major coffee-producing countries, jeopardizing future crops and putting pressure on global prices.

“Coffee is the canary in the coal mine for climate change and its effect on agriculture,” said Elizabeth Shapiro-Garza, associate professor of the practice of environmental policy and management at Duke University.

“If you like your cup of coffee in the morning, climate change is absolutely going to be affecting the quality, the availability and the price of that cup of coffee.”

Brazil and Vietnam, the two biggest producers of coffee in the world, are both currently grappling with drought.

The drought in Brazil is the worst the country has seen in more than 70 years. It has also been dealing with wildfires
Drought in Brazil, Vietnam highlight climate change's impact on coffee: experts

 

[911]

I was always taught that warmer air produces more rain. Both Vietnam and Rio have warm climates. However, for rain to be produced from the warm air, a cooling factor is necessary.

Hypothetical Scenario: If it’s 90 degrees outside during the day and 75 at night, that difference in temperatures may not be much of a cooling factor. If the temperature would drop to 65, that would probably be enough of a cool down to produce some rain.

I didn’t look any of this up online, so maybe I am off target here.

 

[VaughanJB]

Just today I watched a documentary on Bangladesh, and global warming has had a terrible effect there. Entire villages have been washed away and forced to move. Rice crops have been destroyed, and farmers have had to turn to shrimp farms to work. In a surprise to me, shrimp make less than rice in sales from a farmer perspective.

I wish more people would think about global warming without arguing about the cause. The cause doesn't matter as much as the actual effects. Whether one believes it's man made, of cyclical, that won't matter to the people in southern Bangladesh.

 

[Don M.]

Coffee is just one of many food products that are being affected by the climate. 3 or 4 years ago, we used to pay about $1 for a 4lb. sack of sugar...now that same sack is over $3. Nearly every food item we buy has gone way up in price in recent years,

 

[Paco Dennis]

I just recently joined a Zoom group that features how journalists around the world can get the message that the climate disaster is happening now. I was thinking once the coffee gets hard to get, the general public might actually begin to take this as serious as it really is.

 

[fuzzybuddy]

What scares me about global warming is that we really don't know how this will affect farming. The climate is such a complicated, interactive system that there will be changes we never thought of. And most of them, not good. If you look at every great empire in history, a few years of draught, and they were toast.