Among the top stories promoted by Google News today is an article in the online foreign policy publication, Inkstick Media, titled “Preventing a Climate Coffee Catastrophe.”
The article asserts climate change is threatening the collapse of the coffee industry. Real-world data shows this is false.
As with almost every agricultural crop, United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization data show coffee production has set multiple new records globally and in country after country, during the modest warming of the past half-century.
“[A]s people sip their Arabica with almond milk, the coffee industry teeters on the brink of collapse as it struggles with the ever-growing risk of climate change,” writes Inkstick Media.
This is false. Rather than struggling, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports between 1988 and 2019, world coffee production has steadily increased, even while the Earth has modestly warmed at the same time.
See the red line in Figure 1 below.
Interestingly, between June 1988, when NASA’s James Hansen famously declared humans were causing global warming, and 2019 (the latest available data), world coffee production increased by more than 77 percent, from 5.6 million tons in 1988 to more than 10 million tons in 2019.
Going from the general to the specific, Inkstick Media claims Columbia’s coffee producers are particularly suffering from climate change-induced crop damage, writing:
“Take Colombia, for example. Colombia is one of the world’s top coffee-growing countries [the world’s 3rd largest coffee producer], accounting for US$2.64 billion per year, or around 16 percent of the country’s GDP. The majority of Colombian coffee farms are modest in size and family-owned. Climate change impacts these farmers at alarming rates and threatens their livelihoods as new weather patterns, ever-changing season lengths, and severe weather events become commonplace.”
Most Columbian coffee producers would likely be surprised to discover they are struggling. FAO data show between 1988 and 2019, Columbia’s coffee crop production increased 25 percent, even as the amount of land devoted to coffee production fell by 10 percent.
What is true for coffee farmers in Columbia, is true for coffee producers in the remaining four of the top five coffee-producing countries, as well.
Between 1988 and 2019, FAO data show:
- Brazil’s coffee production increased more than 123 percent;
- Ethiopia’s coffee production increased more than 168 percent;
- Indonesia’s coffee production increased more than 95 percent;
- Coffee production in Viet Nam increased approximately 3,909 percent.
Sorry, Google News and Inkstick Media, but there is no climate/coffee crisis. Coffee production keeps growing as the Earth modestly warms.
Read more at Climate Realism
I’ve read some impressive posts here today.
There will never be a shortage of coffee because we can live without it. Starbucks will sell the last drop, just like Bezos is selling a ride into “space” . Don’t be a victim, be a capitalist.
The original coffee climate scare story was an extrapolation from non-coffee-producing members of the coffee family.
This is like saying that I shall go broke because it is rumoured my cousin twice removed is facing future financial difficulty.
The few species that are actually used to produce coffee are not facing a credible climate threat. While I am not familiar with the extended relatives that constitute the species of the original study, I am familiar with climate change plant scares and my scepticism meter went into overdrive upon reading the original coffee scare material.
The term, ‘Brunswick Green,’ is not only a colour but a Melbourne school of political thought. It is named after a fashionable inner-city suburb, where sitting at cafes and pontificating on climate change in a wider country well beyond the pontificaters’ understanding was a favourite past-time before Victoria became the Covid Lockdown State.
This is a typical Brunswick Green beat-up, beloved by those who once killed a few herbs with neglect in an inner-city apartment window-box while thrashing out internet comments, criticising farmers for not toeing the line on climate change (even though many Australian farmers are mad enough to do so).
There is an obvious centrally coordinated plan to continue to publish articles on non-existent adverse impacts on crops by climate change. Perhaps the worst impact of this plan is it draws attention away from what may be a real threat to the world’s food supply. The fungus Verticillium is a growing problem. It has devastated entire fields and orchards. It can remain viable in the soil for 15 years without a host plant, and there is no fungicide that is effective against it. Fortunately it doesn’t infect monocots so wheat, corn, rice, and barely are safe. It affects over 300 plant species. A partial list of susceptible crops include coffee, cherry, barberry, blackberry, grape, raspberry, strawberry, alfalfa, hops, safflower, gooseberry, plum, brussel sprouts, cabbage, eggplant, cucumbers, mint, pepper, potatoes, pumpkin, spinach, tomato, watermelon, honeydew, olive, and cantaloupe. Of these, tomato, potato, and eggplant have resistant or tolerant varieties.
Since the monocots are not impacted we are not looking at losing the world’s food supply, but the crops it does impact could cause a major disruption and perhaps food shortages. The problem is getting worse. My guess is this post is the first time many readers of this website have become aware of the problem. Instead of devoting hours of programming to the lie that extreme weather events are increasing, the networks should be informing the public of this real problem. Of the trillions of dollars being spent on the climate change fraud, think of the good that a tiny fraction of those funds might be able to do in developing an effective fungicide or crops that are resistant.
Kind of like the Save the Rain Forests scam back in the 1990’s the lie that a Rain Forests the size of Ten(10)City Blocks was going up in Smoke was a Lie its all based upon Lies,Politics ad Junk Science just like with DDT
So we are supposed to trash our energy infrastructure so we can drink coffee????