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The global coffee crisis is coming

A plant so valuable and popular is becoming harder and harder to grow

Coffee is everywhere. Coffee is one of the most popular plants in the world. It takes about 3-4 years to grow before producing berries, which we use to brew coffee, one of the most popular drinks in the modern era.

Coffee berries are picked, washed, pulped, dried, and roasted to make coffee, and the world consumes about 500 billion cups of it every year. It is grown by millions of farmers across Latin America, Africa and Asia. But, there's a crisis on the horizon, mainly because coffee doesn't grow anywhere, but it's needed everywhere. The land capable of growing coffee plant is shrinking as man-made climate change warms the planet.

In countries like Colombia, one of the biggest coffee producers of the world, the impact of that crisis can already be felt. About 15 years ago, production fell enormously, and with each consecutive year things are even worse. There're a wide variety of coffee plants, few are farmed, most of them are wild.

Two of the most popular cultivated coffee plants are Robusta and Arabica. Robusta is more hardy, but it carries the more traditional bitter taste and high acidity. Arabica is the good and fancy stuff, it has a smooth and mild taste, and is used for high-quality coffee.

Most of the fast-coffee we drink in cafeterias are made of the last one. Nowadays, as climate changes and the prices get lower, native coffee growers are afraid that the coffee cultural landscape in coffee growing countries will be just a memory.

In the early 20th century, Americans and Europeans were buying more and more coffee. So prices were high and that created a boom in coffee producing countries. Colombia was the second biggest producer in the world at the time, and it was mostly grown on large plantations.

In 1929, the US economy crashed, demand for coffee plummeted and so did the price, bankrupting the plantations. That was the moment, when the government stepped in.

The second interesting boom in price was discernible during the oil crisis, when shipping became more expensive, thus shooting up the price of coffee.

When the government stepped in, they purchased the large coffee fields from the owners, many had more than a thousand hectares, and broke them up into smaller plots of about 16 hectares each, before selling them to laborers.

The idea was that these smaller farms would grow other crops along with coffee to sustain themselves through price fluctuations. In Colombia, the government to support the new small farms, had created Fedecafe.

This agency would organize and represent the farmers, by negotiating fair prices and favorable deals with other countries. The most important deal was in 1962, when Colombia signed the International Coffee Agreement with 69 other countries, and set a price minimum for export. The agreement changed many times throughout the decades, but the participating countries remained more or less the same.

Both species require specific conditions to grow, but Arabica is particularly more sensitive. The plant needs temperatures between 18-21°C. Too hot and the berries won't grow correctly. Too cold and it can freeze. It also needs specific amount of rain.

Preferably with a 3 month dry season to flower. Crucially, it needs warm days and cool nights, so it grows best at a certain elevation between 1000-2000 meters above sea level. Altogether, that means Arabica grows best between these latitudes: 25°N - 30°S.

If you were to create a perfect place for coffee, it would look a lot like Colombia. Colombian coffee is cultivated by hand, and because of that it is considered the best in the world. But, climate change, global warming and many economic factors are slowly changing the Colombian region.

That resulted in pushing the optimal elevation for coffee higher up the mountain, from 1000-2000m to higher. The warmer climate is also ideal for pests and fungi, which undermine coffee production attacking the coffee plants.

Temperatures are raising throughout the exporting countries, and with a plant this valuable, but fragile this can result in a huge economic downturn on plantations.

A recent study estimates that by 2050 the amount of land that can sustain coffee cultivation will be reduced by 50%. Another study estimates that 60% of wild coffee species could be at the risk of extinction because of climate change and global warming.

Some of these are used to breed more resistant variaties of Arabica, which make them critical to sustaining coffee production. That's not only bad news for the plant, but also for those who have relied on the coffee industry for generations.

The Colombian GDP is dominated by the services sector, this can also be told about many other exporter countries, such as Brazil. The coffee industry is part of the agriculture sector, which percentage remained constantly low throughout the years.

The low GDP percentage means that the governments tend to neglect the problems the plantantions face every year. But, it's not just a problem for Colombian people, 80% of the world's coffee is grown by 25 million smallholder farmers, many are living in poverty, they don't have the means to fight climate change for saving their plants.

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Since 2013, the amount of land used to grow coffee in Colombia has fallen by more than 7%. The zona Cafetera is projected to warm by .3 degress per decade and see more extreme weather.

There are several ways farmers can protect their coffee plants from the effects of climate change. Shade trees keep the plants cool and stabilize the soil.

They can move their crops uphill, where it's cooler. They can also switch to more resistant varieties of coffee plants. In the 1980s the coffee agreement fell apart along with the price minimum.

Since then, more countries, especially some in Asia, have increasingly flooded the market with cheap coffee. It sparked a crisis around 2009, when extreme weather and coffee rust decimated Colombia's crop.

For farmers it's hard to adapt to climate change, because without another international agreement setting a new price minimum providing reasonable profit for farmers is no longer feasible.

The problem is that all the solutions against climate change cost money. For years on, unless the price of coffee rises again and the farmers have the financial means to cope with climate change, small farms everywhere will continue to be at risk of losing their livelihoods.

Coffee is important, for them more than ever, its cultural and social aspects and importance are undeniable. But, the coffee phenomena may become just a memory.