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Climate Change Is Coming for Your Coffee. Could Genetic Diversity Save It?
If you love your morning coffee, this news should jolt you wide awake: Your coffee is threatened by climate change. “The consequences are already palpable,” says Sophie von Loeben, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany. You might have already noticed the hole in your wallet, because coffee has roughly doubled in price over the last 10 years.
Surprisingly, though 130 coffee species are known to researchers, only two are commercially cultivated, arabica and its tropical cousin robusta. They are both suffering — arabica because it needs a cool climate, and robusta because it thrives with specific amounts of rain. The International Center of Tropical Agriculture has warned that half of the current cultivation areas won’t be suitable for coffee anymore by 2050. This is about more than your cup of joe: 100 million people earn their living through cultivating, harvesting or selling coffee, and the effects of climate change will impact small growers the most.