Quick Take — Andrea Illy: the disappearance of 50 per cent coffee lands is an increasingly concrete prospect

“Experts already said ten years ago that 50 per cent of the world’s coffee-growing land would be gone, due to climate change, and today this prospect is increasingly real.

Andrea Illy, president of illycaffè, thus recalled a prediction made over a decade ago during an interview in Rome at the headquarters of the Foreign Press Association in Italy, conducted by Bernard Bedarida in front of an audience of correspondents from international newspapers.

For Illy, the climate issue is no longer a distant scenario, but a factor that directly affects the future availability of coffee.

Quick Take — Coffee producing countries are getting too hot to grow beans, according to an analysis

Five countries responsible for 75 per cent of the world’s coffee supply record an average of 57 extra days of coffee-damaging heat per year…

The plants, particularly the most valuable Arabica variety, suffer from temperatures above 30°C…

The worst affected coffee producing country was El Salvador, which recorded 99 extra days of plant-damaging heat. Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, accounting for 37% of global production, recorded 70 additional days [days added, in dark red below in The Guardian table] with temperatures above 30°C. Ethiopia, which accounts for 6.4 per cent of coffee production, recorded 34… and there small farmers produce 60 per cent to 80 per cent of their coffee, but received only 0.36 per cent of the funds needed to adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.

The European Parliament votes to dismantle the law against deforestation

The anti-deforestation legislation, hailed as revolutionary by environmental organisations, was strongly criticised from the start by some countries, such as Brazil, the US and, within the EU, Germany, eager to protect their foresters. Several large companies, including Nestlé, Danone and Ferrero, had however prepared themselves and were urging Brussels to definitively implement it…