Climate change simultaneously threatens bees and coffee trees

For coffee lovers, there’s bad news and there’s even more bad news. The Gund Foundation at the University of Vermont has completed the first study on climate change that includes both coffee trees and the bees that pollinate their blossoms.

The results are not good: By 2050, coffee growers in Nicaragua, Honduras and Venezuela may find rising temperatures mean that nearly 90 percent of their land is no longer able to support coffee trees.

Other coffee growing areas, like in Mexico, Africa and Indonesia, will also find that temperature changes will force them to change crops, though other parts of their countries may become useable for coffee plantations.

That might help coffee drinkers, but it will wipe out the livelihoods of many communities, where changing to other crops will produce less profits.

That’s the bad news. Now here’s the other bad news: The change in climate is also going to mean fewer bees to pollinate the coffee blossoms.

Not only will that lower production, but natural pollinization helps form larger, better coffee beans, and so the coffee that grows in 2050 may not be as rich and good-tasting as today’s brew.

You may be too young now to start your day with coffee, but, when you’re 40, you may be complaining that it’s not as good as it used to be. photo/Fernando Rebelo