The global coffee production is being impacted by climate change

This article is a short summary about the research of how climate change is impacting the global coffee production.

Doug Richardson, the author of the recent PLOS Climate article “Synchronous climate hazards pose an increasing challenge to global coffee production” shares his story on his research.

The question that had to be answered is what led Mr Richardson to look into hazards to coffee production.

The new fact of coffee production

The researcher mentioned that he is interested in researching spatially compounding events. This is when there is one or more climate hazards happening in multiple regions, which causes a great impact. An example of this climate impact has been recorded in agriculture due to crop failure.

The study sample

The research focused on a small number of regions - the research showed - “the top 12 coffee producing nations, that together account for around 90% of global production. And we selected 12 ‘climate hazards’ to analyse – six for each species (Arabica and Robusta). We then assessed during which years these hazards occurred between 1980 and 2020, with a particular focus on when a large number of hazards occurred over multiple regions.”

The challenges in the study 

The challenges encountered were that the researcher wanted to relate the coffee data with the coffee yield data. The results showed that the planet is getting warmer and the temperature has increased in this decade from cool temperatures to warm temperatures.

The future outlook of coffee production

For future reference, the researcher hopes to analyse the coffee production trends against climate change but hopes for future researchers to analyse these trends. The resilience of coffee plants is something that needs to be thought of.