From Climate Realism

By H. Sterling Burnett

An article posted by WCNC, Charlotte, North Carolina’s NBC affiliate, claims “it’s getting harder to produce,” coffee, blaming a coffee decline on higher temperatures in growing regions. This is false. Data from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) clearly show that coffee production in each of the top coffee-producing countries has increased substantially during the recent period of modestly warming temperatures.

In her WCNC story, “Climate change impacting production of coffee across the globe, data shows,” Brittany Van Voorhees writes that “Warming temperatures in the biggest coffee-growing regions are impacting the price of coffee and the ability to grow it.” Van Voorhees cites, Kristina Dahl, Ph.D., vice president for Science at Climate Central, and a study she produced, as the sole evidence for this claim. Climate Central is a climate activist group, not an unbiased scientific organization. Had Van Voorhees or WCNC’s fact checkers bothered to check the real-world data on coffee production before running this story, they would have found that coffee production has increased substantially amid slight warming, not been hampered by it. There is no evidence that climate has harmed coffee production at all. In fact, it is likely that higher atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have contributed to higher production, as it has with other crops globally.

Climate Realism has debunked previous media reports that climate change was harming coffee production on dozens of occasions in the past few years, here, here, here, and here, for example. One would hope that the media would learn from the exposure that their past false claims have gotten and cease promoting this demonstrably false claim. Sadly, the media seem to never learn, accepting alarming falsehoods from climate activist groups at face value as if they were presenting facts.

Data from the FAO show that during the twenty-first century, the period that has supposedly been the warmest in recent history, coffee production has increased substantially, globally, and in each of the five countries WCNC highlighted in its story: Brazil, Columbia, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. From 1995 to 2024, the most recent year for which data is available:

• Global coffee production has more than doubled, increasing by more than 104 percent, with the most recent record for production coming in 2024;
• Coffee production in Brazil has escalated more than 264 percent;
• Coffee production in Columbia has grown a relatively modest 2 percent;
• Coffee production in Ethiopia has been boosted approximately 156 percent;
• Coffee production in Indonesia expanded 76.4 percent; and
• Coffee production in Vietnam increased an astounding 824 percent. (see the figure, below)

In short, each country Climate Central identified in its report as having difficulty growing coffee due to global warming has regularly set new records for production during the period of warming, and has seen their production increase, sometimes by huge amounts, amid recent warming. There is simply no evidence coffee producers in those countries or elsewhere around the globe are suffering lost harvests. Based on this data, it is simply untenable to claim modest warming has made coffee production more difficult – the numbers don’t lie.

Climate activist groups and progressive organizations dedicated to ending fossil fuel use will likely continue to assert crop production, including coffee yields, is being harmed by climate change. Telling such lies drive their funding, influence, and power, but the media should not be so gullible and continue to publicize such lies. Good journalists should investigate such claims with a skeptical eye and check them against the data.