Starbucks’ Howard Schultz says your morning coffee ritual is under threat
Scientists are already seeing the effects of climate change on coffee production around the globe, and they predict things will get worse by 2050
By Hilary Brueck
Outgoing Starbucks executive chairman Howard Schultz is worried about the future of your morning coffee ritual.
“Climate change is going to play a bigger role in affecting the quality and integrity of coffee,” Schultz told Time on a recent visit to a Starbucks coffee farm in Costa Rica.
As the Earth warms, predictable weather systems are going haywire. Rainy seasons are turning dry in some areas, while increased precipitation has brought flooding to others.
Farmers that grow coffee around the planet’s midsection are already feeling the pressure of less predictable growing seasons. In Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, bean counts are down due to the damaging Hemileia vastatrix fungus, which started spreading six years ago. Scientists think this coffee rust, as its known, thrives in radical high-and-low temperature swings, which are characteristic of climate change. Coffee production decreased 31 per cent on average in Colombia during a rust epidemic from 2008 to 2011, and the coffee indicator price went up 55 per cent in that time, according to a study in the journal Food Security.