• About
    • Which Energy Mix is this?
  • Climate News Network Archive
  • Contact
The climate news that makes a difference.
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
SUBSCRIBE
DONATE
No Result
View All Result
The Energy Mix
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities
  FEATURED
Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe March 17, 2023
Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska March 14, 2023
U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse March 14, 2023
$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’ March 14, 2023
UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’ March 9, 2023
Next
Prev

Coffee producers feel the heat

September 29, 2017
Reading time: 4 minutes
Primary Author: Tim Radford

 

Global warming threatens to substantially reduce the amount of land suitable for coffee-growing by 2050, but bees could fly to the rescue.

LONDON, 29 September, 2017 – The news is quite enough to send any addict reaching for a double espresso: global warming could be about to reduce the area suitable for coffee-growing in Latin America by up to 88%.

  • Be among the first to read The Energy Mix Weekender
  • A brand new weekly digest containing exclusive and essential climate stories from around the world.
  • The Weekender:The climate news you need.
Subscribe

The world’s favourite drink is produced by plants that are adapted to a precise range of conditions – and a world of rising global average temperatures could leave harvests in decline and established growers impoverished by mid-century, according to a new study.

Researchers report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA that they used ecological models to estimate future changes in the distribution of arabica coffee plants and 39 species of coffee-pollinating bee in the world’s largest coffee-growing region. And if humans go on burning fossil fuels at the present profligate way, the areas suitable for growing coffee could drop somewhere between 73% and 88% by 2050.

Positive pollination

But the same study produced its own sweetener to ease the sting: bees may help reduce the losses. Although the same models show that the diversity of bees in areas suitable for growing coffee may be reduced by between 8% and 18%, at least 10 species of bee would be present to pollinate the flowers and set the berries in between 46% and 59% of the lands that will be suitable for coffee crops.

The message of such studies is: don’t think about the plant, think about the ecological niche.

“For my money, we do a far superior job of predicting the future when we consider both plants and animals, or in this case the bees, and their biology,” says David Roubik, senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, in Panama City, one of the co-authors. “Traditional models don’t build in the ability of organisms to change. They’re based on the world as we know it now, not on the way it could be as people and other organisms adapt.”

“This is the first study to show how both coffee
and bees will likely change under global warming
– in ways that will hit coffee producers hard”

And Taylor Ricketts, director of the University of Vermont’s Gund Institute for Environment, and a co-author, says: “Coffee is one of the most valuable commodities on earth, and needs a suitable climate and pollinating bees to produce well. This is the first study to show how both will likely change under global warming – in ways that will hit coffee producers hard.”

The study suggests that although the picture is of overall decline, some mountain areas of Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia and Costa Rica could become more suitable for coffee as the global temperature rises. But it is a valuable crop and the main income for 100 million people, many of them poorer farmers and growers in the developing world. Only a few months ago researchers warned that climate change could put Ethiopia’s harvests at risk and last year scientists warned that extreme weather conditions and high temperatures could threaten 50% of Brazil’s crop.

Natural ecosystems

However, the researchers stress, the pollinators can help. Bees have a positive effect on coffee yield, on the fruit that is set and on the weight of the berries, and native bee species are often more effective pollinators than invader or introduced bee species. So the study offers a practical incentive to preserve species diversity and conserve natural ecosystems: that way nature delivers the breadwinning coffee bean and the honey as well.

“If there are bees in the coffee plots, they are very efficient and very good at pollinating, so productivity increases and also berry weight,” says Pablo Imbach, who led the research from the Centre for Tropical Agriculture, in Hanoi, Vietnam. “In the areas projected to lose coffee suitability, we wanted to know whether that loss could be offset by bees.” – Climate News Network



in Climate News Network

The latest climate news and analysis, direct to your inbox

Subscribe

Related Posts

U.S. Geological Survey/wikimedia commons
Biodiversity & Habitat

Climate Change Amplifies Risk of ‘Insect Apocalypse’

December 1, 2022
47
Alaa Abd El-Fatah/wikimedia commons
COP Conferences

Rights Abuses, Intrusive Conference App Put Egypt Under Spotlight as COP 27 Host

November 14, 2022
27
Western Arctic National Parklands/wikimedia commons
Arctic & Antarctica

Arctic Wildfires Show Approach of New Climate Feedback Loop

January 2, 2023
32

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

I agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Trending Stories

David Dodge, Green Energy Futures/flickr

U.S. Solar Developers Scramble after Silicon Valley Bank Collapse

March 14, 2023
477
Environmental Defence Canada/flickr

Repsol Abandons Plan to Ship Canadian LNG to Europe

March 18, 2023
250
Joshua Doubek/Wikipedia

No New Jobs Came from Alberta’s $4B ‘Job Creation’ Tax Cut for Big Oil

October 6, 2022
853
Behrat/Wikimedia Commons

Hawaii Firm Turns Home Water Heaters into Grid Batteries

March 14, 2023
473
Rebecca Bollwitt/flickr

Fossils Stay ‘Oily’, Gibsons Sues Big Oil, U.S. Clean Energy Booms, EU Pushes Fossil Phaseout, and Fukushima Disaster was ‘No Accident’

March 14, 2023
216
NTSB

Ohio Train Derailment, Toxic Chemical Spill Renews Fears Over Canada-U.S. Rail Safety

March 8, 2023
1.4k

Recent Posts

U.S. Bureau of Land Management/flickr

Biden Approves $8B Oil Extraction Plan in Ecologically Sensitive Alaska

March 14, 2023
131
EcoAnalytics

Canadians Want Strong Emissions Cap Regulations, Not More Missed Targets

March 14, 2023
141
U.S. National Transportation Safety Board/flickr

$30.9B Price Tag Makes Trans Mountain Pipeline a ‘Catastrophic Boondoggle’

March 14, 2023
256
Raysonho/wikimedia commons

Purolator Pledges $1B to Electrify Last-Mile Delivery

March 14, 2023
91
United Nations

UN Buys Tanker, But Funding Gap Could Scuttle Plan to Salvage Oil from ‘Floating Time Bomb’

March 10, 2023
97
Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons

Biden Cuts Fossil Subsidies, But Oil and Gas Still Lines Up for Billions

March 10, 2023
192
Next Post

Dr. Who Star Backs UK's Offshore Wind

The Energy Mix - The climate news you need

Copyright 2023 © Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

  • About
  • Contact
  • Privacy Policy and Copyright
  • Cookie Policy

Proudly partnering with…

scf_withtagline
No Result
View All Result
  • Canada
  • UK & Europe
  • Fossil Fuels
  • Ending Emissions
  • Community Climate Finance
  • Clean Electricity Grid
  • Cities & Communities

Copyright 2022 © Smarter Shift Inc. and Energy Mix Productions Inc. All rights reserved.

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}