Climate change is coming for our coffee
CNN
Bad news for coffee lovers: Climate change will make it much harder to grow Arabica coffee in the coming years, according to a study published Wednesday in the scientific journal Plos One.
The study examined how coffee-growing conditions will change by 2050 based on projections from several global climate models. Results show that coffee plants will be "drastically" less suitable for cultivation in current coffee-producing regions by 2050 because of the impacts of climate change.
Arabica coffee, which is used by Starbucks and other major coffee sellers, is already a finicky crop that requires specific conditions to flourish. Currently the most suitable areas for coffee growth are in Central and South America, particularly Brazil, as well as Central and West Africa and parts of South and Southeast Asia, according to the study by Roman Grüter and others at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland.