every country I work with has experienced climate events that they've described as completely out of whack," Geoff Watts, who helped found the Intelligensia coff eehouse in Chicago, told Good magazine. Disruptions in rain patterns have caused or exacerbated problems like coff ee rust, a form of fungus that attacks coff ee plants in warm, moist conditions. Schilling agrees. "I was recently at the RAMA CAFÉ event
in Nicaragua, which attracted hundreds of producers from Central and South America,
and listened to even more of them and they are basically saying that the eff ects of climate change that we (researchers) talk about happening in 30 years, is already happening on their plantations." He adds that it's unknown how much of this is due to isolated climate events as opposed to long-term, permanent climate change, but climate change is more of a concern to growers than ever. In many regions, the land
available to grow specialty Arabica is shrinking. When the climate gets warmer, growers literally have to retreat up the mountain—until they run out of room. "In the specialty realm, there's
only so much land as you go up the mountain. If climate change increases the temperature for the farmer and the farmer needs to move uphill, as you go uphill, there's less and less land,
says Alex Morgan, manager for North America for Sustainable Agriculture at the Rainforest Alliance. "I think it's a very, very real threat for the specialty industry, and I think more and more, consumers, roasters and importers are really going to have to start thinking about how we address this as an industry.
" "
POLITICAL FOOTBALL Th e problem, however, is
easier to describe than to solve. Part of the challenge in dealing with climate change is that the very concept is controversial; it has become a political football. "I think the bottom line for most of us is that we can't do much
April 2012 • www.specialty-coffee.com | 17
"Over the last four or fi ve years, nearly every farmer in
about the phenomenon even if it is real," says David Greene,
president of Greene Bros. Specialty Coff ee, a roaster based in Hackettstown, N.J. "Th e discussion, moreover, has become politicized and degraded to tiresome ideological 'digging in' ... like religious dogmatism." Even some who concede the reality of global warming are
unsure that it has a direct short-term impact on production. "I believe there's global warming, but you know, you can go
" he says. "I talked to many growers
back 300 years and look at the weather patterns and how they wax and wane,
Roasting Co., Lafayette, Ind. "I think a lot of this is hype built up to try and increase prices." Given the controversial nature of the global warming
" says Gerald Kalal, owner of K. Dees Coff ee and
issue, it's unsurprising that the response of the U.S. and other governments has been very slow—too slow, in some opinions.
