It’s so terrible! Everybody panic!!!!!!!
(UK Guardian) Forget about super-sizing into the trenta a few years from now: Starbucks is warning of a threat to world coffee supply because of climate change.
In a telephone interview with the Guardian, Jim Hanna, the company’s sustainability director, said its farmers were already seeing the effects of a changing climate, with severe hurricanes and more resistant bugs reducing crop yields.
The company is now preparing for the possibility of a serious threat to global supplies. “What we are really seeing as a company as we look 10, 20, 30 years down the road – if conditions continue as they are – is a potentially significant risk to our supply chain, which is the Arabica coffee bean,” Hanna said.
Uh, what hurricanes? And “resistant bugs”? WTF? It’s like the Warmists think that evolution no longer happens.
Hanna is to travel to Washington on Friday to brief members of Congress on climate change and coffee at an event sponsored by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The coffee giant is part of a business coalition that has been trying to push Congress and the Obama administration to act on climate change – without success, as Hanna acknowledged.
Ah, a bit of lobbying from one of those big evil corporations. Because it has rained. But, he’s right, sort of
Harvest expectations and economic jitters are watering down coffee prices, but consider that skimming a little froth off the top.
Arabica coffee futures have hit as high as $3.0625 a pound this year. And even though they’re falling, growing demand and limited supplies of beans mean there’s a floor in sight, and it is $2.
From Beijing to Brasilia, more people are waking up to the joys of coffee, even as prices are above historic levels.
So, the price is going up because more people want it? And, according to the article, it is expensive to grow, so, people aren’t just jumping to grow coffee beans.
But weather troubles are hitting big growers and could undercut supply. Torrential rains in Colombia earlier this year could dash the country’s chances of producing its estimated 9 million 60 kg. bags in 2011. From January through August, the Andean nation produced just over 5 million bags, which could make this year the fourth consecutive disappointing harvest from the country.
See? It’s cause it’s rainy, due to climate change….oh, wait
There are even concerns that coffee-bean machine Brazil—the supplier of more than a third of the world’s coffee—may fall short of an expected record harvest in 2012. Cold weather and winds during the austral winter this year may have hurt trees, and the rains that spark coffee-tree flowering, which gives way to the coffee berries, are running late.
The reason that coffee harvests have been bad over the past 4-5 years is because of cold winters. Obviously caused because someone used their air conditioner in America.
(I’ve been sitting on this one since the 14th, figured it was time to post it)
