Coffee at major risk from climate change while cashews and avocados face threats, warns new report

27 Jan 2022 --- Coffee, cashews and avocados are essential crops for consumers and small-scale tropical farmers worldwide – but they are facing critical risks as the planet warms up. Future production will be nowhere near current levels, which is particularly concerning much-loved coffee, a crop susceptible to high temperatures.

Coffee is the most vulnerable of the three, with predicted declines in suitability in all major producing regions, including Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia and Colombia, according to the latest analysis from researchers at Zurich University of Applied Sciences.

The extensive research suggests that climate change will reduce suitability for growing coffee arabica—the dominant coffee species—in most regions where it is currently produced. 

The researchers combined climate change projections and soil factors to model and predict how suitable different regions worldwide will be for growing coffee, cashews and avocados in 2050. 

The research prompts calls for greater efforts to help farmers adapt.

The price of coffee beans has doubled in the last year due to freight costs and extreme weather events in Brazil.

However, such studies have not considered land and soil characteristics that could also impact suitability. 

Future projections of crop declineCurrent landscape and climate change suitability analysis. (Credit: Grüter et al., 2022 Plos One)
The findings suggest a need for climate change adaptations in major crop-producing countries. The scientists recommend that producers breed more varieties adapted to higher temperatures or drought. 

Strategies will also be needed to mitigate the environmental impact of any expansion to new locations.

Lead researcher, Roman Grüter, along with Tim Trachsel, Patrick Laube and Isabel Jaisli, at Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Switzerland, present these findings in a paper, “Expected global suitability of coffee, cashew and avocado due to climate change” in the open-access journal Plos One. 

The researchers used projections from 14 global climate models under three different future emission scenarios and incorporated land and soil requirements for the crops, such as pH, texture and slope.

“For both cashew and avocado, areas suitable for cultivation are expected to expand globally while in most main producing countries, the areas of highest suitability may decrease,” explain the scientists. 

An increase in land suitability is expected for avocado crops. The analysis predicts that some regions will become more suitable and some less suitable for each crop. 

Highly suitable regions for cashews are predicted to decrease in some major producing countries, including India, Côte d’Ivoire and Benin. The researchers report that suitable areas for avocados will also decline for some significant producers such as the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Indonesia.

Regions with greater projected suitability
The scientists find that areas suitable for all three crops may expand at higher altitudes and latitudes, especially cashews and avocados. 

Regions with greater future suitability are located in the US, Argentina, China, and East Africa.

Meanwhile, no studies have addressed how climate change will impact avocado and cashew suitability globally.

Innovations in coffee breeding can mitigate the effects and changes occurring in the environment. The Technical Research Centre of Finland has successfully produced coffee cells in a bioreactor through cellular agriculture – an invention that can help make coffee production more sustainable.

By Inga de Jong