STiR coffee and tea magazine

36 STiR coffee and tea / Issue 4, 2017 (August / September) LONDON, UK Royal Botanic Gardens researcher Aaron Davis hesitated last year to leap to conclu- sions despite three intense years of study, but the initial work done by his team showed trouble ahead for Ethiopia's coffee gardens. "I prefer to wait until the research is reviewed by experts," said Davis, who dis- cussed his preliminary findings at the International Coffee Organization's first coffee congress. Davis is a meticulous scientist wary of climate alarmists. That is why is team logged 1,800 data points for the model, ran 2,000 computer simulations, and traveled 30,000 kilometers to collect data and interview farmers. Researchers mapped more than 750,000 sq.km (about two-thirds of the country) and generated 800 million image pixels to map the coffee forest. In June the peer-reviewed journal Nature Plants, published results of the study managed by Davis under the title: 'Resilience potential of the Ethiopian coffee sector under climate change' Skipping the detail three bullet points emerge: The bad - up to 60% of the land currently producing Ethiopia's coffee could be unsuitable for coffee farming before the end of the century. The good - moving coffee production to higher ground, known as upsloping, com- bined with forest conservation and restoration that could substantially increase the area suitable for coffee growing. The risk - Ethiopia is the fifth largest coffee producer in the world, harvesting a crop that employs 15 million and contributes a quarter of the country's export earnings. Getting it wrong could do irreparable damage to the world's most important source of coffee. Justin Moat, co-leader of the study at Kew Gardens said: "This is the culmination of many years work, where we are trying to understand in detail the influence of climate change on coffee production in Ethiopia. We found that a 'business as usual' approach could be disastrous for the Ethiopian coffee economy in the long-term. Timely, pre- cise, science-based decision making is required now and over the coming decades, to ensure sustainability and resilience for the Ethiopian coffee sector." The new study uses detailed computer modelling developed by the World Climate Research Program (WCRP), and high resolution satellite imagery to map the coffee growing landscape of Ethiopia, in combination with numerous computer simulations, to project changes in climatic suitability for coffee under different climate change sce- narios until the end of this century. Safeguarding Ethiopia's Coffee Takes on New Urgency By Dan Bolton Climate-resistant coffee planted at higher altitudes could save Ethiopia production Hand-sorting Ethiopian arabica

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