Some good news about coffee

It can seem like every article about climate change and agriculture is doom and gloom about the effects of severe weather events like droughts, floods, extreme heat, insect infestations, diseases, and so on. However, among the negativity there exist a few bright spots. Recently that happened with reports of a new experiment on how it may be possible to “climate-proof” coffee.

Coffee, along with chocolate, is one of the crops most affected by the effects of a warming planet. Predictions indicate that half the current growing area for coffee will become unsuitable for the crop by 2050. This is happening during a time when coffee consumption is rapidly growing, with all signs pointing to a disaster in the near future if nothing changes. However, a public-private international partnership is exploring new cultivars of arabica coffee plants, the ones preferred by most coffee drinkers.

While arabica varieties are the most popular, they are also the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. According to the article, part of arabica’s fragility is due to its gene pool being surprisingly narrow, with all varieties widely grown today derived from a small subset of coffee plants native to Ethiopia. Since coffee plants are slow-growing, breeding new varieties can take decades. The new partnership, called Innovea, plans to accelerate this development by facilitating research across company and country borders in an industry that traditionally closely guards its development. Let’s hope this collaboration is successful and leads to more international cooperation in agriculture and industry. After all, we’re all on this rock together.