Coffee futures have been on an extended price rally for months. Headlines warn consumers already anxious about inflation that their daily cup is getting more expensive. Behind those stories is a harsher reality: supplies are becoming tighter and less predictable because of extreme weather, itself a direct consequence of climate change.

World Coffee Research, surveying a growing body of scientific literature, found evidence that confirms earlier predictions: by 2050, the land area suitable for Arabica coffee production could shrink by 50 percent. Researchers are especially worried about Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, where large, hot, and increasingly dry regions have already become unsuitable for cultivation.

The problem reaches far beyond Brazil. A study published in PLOS One echoes World Coffee Research’s findings, warning that Arabica faces up to a 50 percent loss of suitable growing areas by mid-century in major producers such as Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Colombia. With 2025 already marked by worsening drought conditions across many of the world’s key coffee-growing regions, the stakes are clear. To understand what emerging water-stress data mean for the future of coffee, we spoke with leading climate and coffee experts.

Kaveh Zahedi and Hideki Kanamaru, natural resources officers with the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment, point to a mounting stack of research sounding the alarm. “By 2050, up to half of the current coffee-growing land may no longer be viable due to a changing climate. Without swift and substantial action, the viability of coffee as a global commodity could be in jeopardy. The impacts are already being felt: global coffee prices surged to multi-year highs last year, driven by weather disruptions in major producing countries,” they noted.

Scientists agree that the drought hitting major coffee regions, particularly Brazil, is without precedent. Soil moisture has fallen sharply, while rising temperatures are driving higher evaporation and worsening the damage. Climate models suggest that by mid-century, global growing areas for Arabica may drop by half, especially in Ethiopia, Brazil, Mesoamerica, and East Africa. Experts warn that without both climate mitigation and serious adaptation, coffee will become scarcer and more expensive, with supply chains disrupted and quality eroded—a trend some describe as “flavour-flation,” where taste suffers even as prices rise.

On the ground, the data are already troubling. Soil moisture records from Fundação Procafé in Minas Gerais show a water deficit of 300 millimeters at the end of the dry season in October 2024, far worse than the 110-millimeter deficit in 2023 and a sharp departure from long-term surplus levels.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service has described Brazil as enduring its “most intense and widespread drought in history,” with serious consequences for coffee flowering and yields in the 2024–2025 season. One NOAA–UCLA study finds that since 2000, increased evaporation driven by higher temperatures now accounts for 61 percent of drought severity, underscoring that climate change is intensifying drought beyond simple rainfall shortages.

Ethiopia, often described as coffee’s birthplace, faces its own peril. Research by Kew Gardens in London shows that under a plus-4-degree Celsius warming scenario, current coffee-growing areas there could shrink by up to 60 percent, and by around 55 percent even under milder warming. In Tanzania, rising night-time temperatures and worsening drought are projected to cut yields significantly, pushing optimal coffee zones upslope by 150 to 200 meters, a shift that threatens both biodiversity and existing farmland.

For Dr. Miguel Altieri, a professor of agroecology at the University of California, Berkeley, much of the crisis is intertwined with how coffee is grown. “Brazilian Arabica coffee production is threatened by high temperatures linked to climate change. The abandonment of traditional systems where coffee was grown under various shade trees exacerbated such vulnerability,” he explained. Shade trees, he added, help shield crops from excessive heat and, during extended dry periods, retain soil moisture and increase humidity. “The only sensible adaptation strategy is therefore to return to biodiverse, resilient coffee systems, as done by thousands of small farmers in Central America and parts of Colombia.”

The economics facing farmers are as troubling as the changing climate. Fairtrade International’s senior advisor on coffee, Colleen Anunu, underscores that many growers have endured decades of low prices that have left deep scars. “Coffee farmers have experienced decades of low prices, resulting in long-term effects that cannot be rectified easily. Farmer revenues have been in constant decline because of these sustained low prices for coffee, while prices for labour, inputs, and logistics are all increasing, leading to underinvestment in farms and lower yields that become exacerbated by climate change,” she said.

Anunu added that a shifting regulatory environment is imposing new costs and paperwork burdens on farmers and their cooperatives. “Even with today’s high pricing market, coffee farmers are largely unable to meet their costs of production, let alone achieve a living income.”

Fairtrade’s work is anchored among smallholder farmers. Roughly 95 percent of the world’s coffee farms are smaller than five hectares, yet they produce about three-quarters of global coffee. The remaining quarter comes from large estates. “These smallholder farmers face several challenges, including negotiating with international buyers to earn enough for a decent standard of living, difficult working conditions, and climate change that is increasingly pushing farmers to shift production areas and change their approach,” Anunu said.

To support them, Fairtrade’s Coffee Dashboard offers tools and data, including the number of small producer organizations and production volumes. Its “risk map” visualizes climate and market vulnerabilities, helping cooperatives and buyers see where the pressure is greatest.

Dr. Ernesto Méndez, co-director of the Institute for Agroecology and professor of agroecology at the University of Vermont, has spent 26 years working with coffee smallholders. His conclusion is blunt. “There’s no question that climate change is affecting coffee regions and communities around the world. Coffee shrubs are very sensitive to weather conditions for their development. For a coffee plant to flower, it needs to have just the right amount of moisture and temperature. The right conditions are also necessary for the flowers to set and then become the coffee cherries that are harvested.”

An extreme weather event, he warned, can wipe out an entire season’s cherries. “Several weather conditions complicate coffee production, including the amount and timing of rainfall, temperature ranges and changes, as well as cloud cover.”

For most of coffee’s history, Méndez noted, it was relatively rare for extreme weather to damage plantations on a regular basis. “However, this has drastically changed in the last two decades. In 2015, I visited coffee farms in the region of Copán, Honduras. For the first time in all my years of researching coffee, I heard farmers discussing the need for irrigation. They were worried that the erratic behaviour of the rainfall might result in reduced coffee flowering or preventing flowers from setting. We discussed how complicated it could be, given the mountainous terrain where most coffee plantations are located. Since then, climatic conditions have only gotten more erratic and extreme.”

He cautions against reading climate models as destiny. Coffee suitability models, in his view, are valuable but imperfect. “The suitability of a coffee region is the result of the interaction of a diversity of factors, including climatic conditions, but also soil, management practices, coffee varieties, etc. Farmers can adapt in many ways to changing climate conditions, and it is hard to accurately predict which farmers might have to abandon the crop entirely. That said, supporting farmers to adapt, including growing other crops, seems like the best precautionary strategy.”

At the FAO, Zahedi and Kanamaru have reached similar conclusions about the limits of incrementalism. “Incremental fixes like better water management and farming practices help, but will not be enough. We need transformative moves, such as shifting to sustainable agroforestry; developing drought- and heat-tolerant varieties; and redesigning the entire supply chain – from farm to cup – for long-term sustainability. They help farmers to adapt while reducing emissions from coffee production.”

If there is a hopeful thread, it lies in the fact that adaptation is no longer an abstract idea. It is already happening in fields and hillsides around the world. Organizations such as World Coffee Research and Embrapa are racing to breed more resilient coffee plants and to support agroforestry, soil conservation, and targeted irrigation strategies. The timeline is tight; climate-savvy innovation has become essential to protect livelihoods, maintain supply, and preserve coffee as a global staple.

The UN FAO is helping to make this transition a reality in places like Uganda, where it supports farmers who interplant bananas with coffee trees. Such agroforestry systems improve soil health, stabilize microclimates, and make crops more resilient to shocks. In Tanzania, the globally important agricultural heritage system on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro offers another model: traditional coffee-growing techniques, embedded in intricate stream-fed garden systems, are being adapted to a changing climate while sustaining a rich diversity of crops.

For Zahedi and Kanamaru, the stakes go well beyond preserving a beloved beverage. “Transition is essential, and it needs to be just: protect biodiversity, respect land limits, and secure the livelihoods of millions who depend on coffee farming. As climate pressures intensify, only bold, coordinated action across sectors and borders, with agrifood solutions at the heart of climate action and investment, will keep coffee in our future.”

For now, coffee remains a daily ritual in homes, offices, and cafés around the world. But the forces reshaping its future are gathering speed. The choices governments, companies, and consumers make in the coming years will determine whether coffee stays affordable and abundant or becomes another casualty of an increasingly unstable climate.