For many people it is unthinkable to start their day without coffee. In the future, however, our favorite drink may cost more. The reason is that coffee trees are extremely sensitive to temperature changes. In other words, they don’t like too much heat, neither excessively dry climates, nor high humidity. The ideal conditions for coffee trees are located near Ecuador, the so-called “coffee belt”. And there, however, the effects of climate change are becoming more and more noticeable.

Friedel Hitch-Adams from the economic institute Südwind explains: “Many tropical countries have experienced instability in weather conditions in recent years. In the past there was a rainy season, a season with less rain, there were relatively constant temperatures. Coffee is mainly grown at a higher altitude, precisely because the temperatures there are relatively stable.”

Big companies focus on competition

In recent decades, the worst climatic conditions have gradually reduced coffee production, as shown by a study by the Australian research organization Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIRO). In addition there are studies that predict that cultivated land will shrink by half by 2050. This will affect many coffee growers, especially in Brazil and Vietnam, the world’s largest coffee producing countries.

In coffee-producing countries, the effects of climate change are more or less well known, says Friedel Hitch-Adams. For 15 years there have been many pilot projects, which however are often not implemented on a large scale because coffee growers are too poor to finance new measures. Different market structures should therefore be created: with long-term contracts, the establishment of support measures and guaranteed market prices, in order to incentivize coffee growers to adapt their production to climate change data.’

According to the German expert from the Bonn-based economic institute Südwind: “The decisive question is not so much what should be done, but what is happening in the competition. If a competitor manages to put coffee on the shelf at 3.99 euros instead of 4.19 euros, then it takes away market shares from others, who are forced to focus on their sales, and not on adapting to the new data of climate change.”