BY KIMMI VO
Kimmi Vo is a second-year International Development student at SAIS.
Coffee culture has become all but ingrained in American lives. From the famed coffee shop “Central Perk”, introduced by the sitcom “Friends”, to Dunkin’ Donuts’ can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head tagline “America runs on Dunkin’”, coffee has become a ubiquitous American staple, found in homes, offices, and shops across the country.[1] In just about 25 years, the number of specialty coffee shops increased from 1,650 in 1991 to more than 31,000 in 2015.[2]
That’s a lot of coffee.
What will happen, then, when up to 60 percent of land used for coffee production becomes unsuitable for farming by 2050, as some scientists predict?[3] Changing weather patterns have made coffee producers nervous for years, and now they are starting to feel their effects. Not unlike many other crops and resources, coffee production has decreased due to changes in temperature, longer droughts, and increased invasion of pests.[4] In fact, the UN recently issued a report on global food insecurity, in which the authors estimate that one billion people will face water and food shortages by 2050.[5] Since the level of alarm is nowhere near where it arguably should be after such findings, perhaps a spotlight on climate change’s assault on coffee will make its effects more tangible.
All over the world, people drink coffee. The United States is the world’s largest importer of coffee, importing more than US$ 6 billion worth of coffee each year, mainly from South America, Central America, and Asia (see figure 1 below). These regions are also among the most vulnerable to climate impacts. Rapid environmental changes in these areas are already changing coffee production in countries like Colombia, Vietnam, and Honduras. These coffee exporting nations are witnessing the volatile nature of coffee production firsthand:
Colombia, overall the third largest producer of coffee, is the world’s number one producer of Arabica coffee (think high-end craft coffee beans at “La Colombe”). As the Arabica bean is especially sensitive to temperature and water availability, rising temperatures and erratic rainfall in Colombia have caused inconsistent yields of the beans.[6] In a survey of farmers in Risaralda, a department in Colombia’s coffee region “Zona Cafetera”, 9 of 10 farmers attested to increases in temperature, and 3 of 4 farmers reported longer droughts.[7] Because of these changes, yearly production in the Zona Cafetera fluctuates up to 40 percent.[8]
Vietnam is currently the world’s largest producer of Robusta coffee, often used for low-quality or instant coffee. Because Vietnam heavily invested in intensive coffee monoculture, Vietnamese Robusta has the greatest yield and productivity in the entire coffee sector.[9] However, research indicates that by 2050, drought season in the Central Highlands could last up to three months longer than usual, with negative implications for an area where 90 percent of the nation’s coffee production takes place.[10]
In Honduras, where the majority of coffee producers are small-holders, even a slight change in their production output can make a difference in whether or not coffee farmers can put food on the table. A New York Times article recently highlighted the story a Honduran coffee farmer whose siblings abandoned their coffee farms to escape income insecurity and resulting food scarcity, ultimately entering the United States as undocumented immigrants. Their story is not unique, as the number of coffee farmers in the country has gone down from 12,000 to just 9,000 in ten years.
Thus, as climate change puts both Arabica and Robusta coffee bean production at risk, it affects the supply of coffee. When we consider the increasing amount of coffee consumption in America and the decreasing availability of coffee beans around the world, a shortage will be inevitable; these developments will have far-reaching implications for farmer incomes and livelihoods, rural-to-urban migration, and international coffee prices and demand. If we don’t start acting to mitigate, or, in some cases, acknowledge climate change, it may soon be time to bid farewell to America’s coffee habit. However, a recent study in Scientific Reports has already offered cocoa as a more climate-resilient crop to serve as an alternative to coffee plants as coffee production declines.[11] If worse comes to worst, we can just have hot chocolate every morning, which may not be such a bad thing anyway. However, it is abundantly clear that this luxury of the American coffee consumer is not an option for struggling small-holders in countries such as Honduras whose livelihoods are threatened by the climate crisis.
[1] Paul, Karl. “International Coffee Day: Americans drink more coffee than soda, tea and juice combined.” Market Watch, September 29, 2017. Available at: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/international-coffee-day-americans-drink-more-coffee-than-soda-tea-and-juice-combined-2017-09-29
[2] Statista. “Number of specialty coffee shops in the United States from 1991 to 2015.” Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/196590/total-number-of-snack-and-coffee-shops-in-the-us-since-2002/
[3] Kauê, de Sousa, van Zonneveld Maarten, Milena Holmgren, Roeland Kindt, and Jenny Ordoñez C. 2019. "The Future of Coffee and Cocoa Agroforestry in a Warmer Mesoamerica." Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group) 9, (06, 2019): 1-9.
[4] Morris, Katlyn S., V. Ernesto Méndez, Maarten van Zonneveld, Andrew Gerlicz, and Martha Caswell. 2016. “Agroecology and Climate Change Resilience In Smallholder Coffee Agroecosystems of Central America.” Available at: https://www.uvm.edu/agroecology/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/MorrisKEtAl_Agroecology-and-Climate-Change-Resilience_16.pdf
[5] IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land. Available at: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/srccl/
[6] UNDP. Mainstreaming Climate Change in Colombia: Screening for risks and opportunity. Available at: https://www.undp.org/content/dam/aplaws/publication/en/publications/environment-energy/www-ee-library/climate-change/mainstreaming-climate-change-in-colombia/CC%20risk%20Mainstreaming%20Climate%20Change%20in%20Colombia-EN.pdf
[7] Eise, Jessica and Natalie White. “For Colombia’s coffee farmers, climate change has become an inescapable reality.” Quartz, August 22, 2018. Available at: https://qz.com/1366309/for-colombias-coffee-region-climate-change-is-an-existential-threat/
[8] Schiffman, Richard. “Colombian coffee farmers are paying the price for climate change.” Grist, July 20, 2019. Available at: https://grist.org/article/colombian-coffee-farmers-are-paying-the-price-for-climate-change/
[9] Haggar, Jeremy and Kathleen Schepp. 2012. “NRI Working Paper Series on Climate Change, Agriculture and Natural Resources No. 4: Coffee and Climate Change Impacts and options for adaption in Brazil, Guatemala, Tanzania and Vietnam.” Available at: https://www.nri.org/publications/working-paper-series/4-coffee-and-climate-change/file
[10] Tatarski, Michael. “Vietnam faces dilemma on forests as climate change threatens coffee crops.” Eco-business, December 2, 2016. Available at: https://www.eco-business.com/news/vietnam-faces-dilemma-on-forests-as-climate-change-threatens-coffee-crops/
[11] Kauê, de Sousa, van Zonneveld Maarten, Milena Holmgren, Roeland Kindt, and Jenny Ordoñez C. 2019. "The Future of Coffee and Cocoa Agroforestry in a Warmer Mesoamerica." Scientific Reports (Nature Publisher Group) 9, (06, 2019): 1-9.
Figure 1: United States coffee imports by country in 2017. Source: The Observatory of Economic Complexity.
Coffe harvest in Laos
