Wild Arabica Extinction

Wild Arabic coffee beans are due to take a hit.

Your morning cup of coffee could become a lot harder to find and certainly more expensive in the coming years.

This is mainly due to human beings and the devastating effect we have had on our planet and the resulting climate change.

Researchers at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew and the Environment and Coffee Forest Forum in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, looked at how climate change might make some land unsuitable for Arabica plants.

The plants are incredibly sensitive to temperature change, not to mention pests and disease.

Most coffee is made from Arabica beans, which go into 70 per cent of the world’s coffee, they are prized for their genetic diversity and grow best at between 18C and 21C and at the current rate of climate change they could be extinct by 2080.

A best-case scenario predicts a 38 per cent reduction in land capable of yielding Arabica by 2080, the worst-case scenario puts the loss at between 90 per cent and a full 100 percent reduction.

The study goes on to note that its results are “conservative” because it did not take into account the large-scale deforestation of the Arabica suitable highland forests of Ethiopia and South Sudan.

This is not only bad news for coffee drinkers but it’s a total disaster for those farmers in Ethiopia, Brazil and Colombia that depend on the coffee bean for their financial stability being that these three countries in 2009/2010 shipped some 93 million bags of coffee around the world, worth an estimated $15.4 billion.

The authors of the report say certain “core sites” capable of yielding Arabica until at least 2080 should be set aside for conservation and be protected for future fertility now, before its too late.