“Coffee on Climate Change” is a take-off on the 1987 anti-drug TV ad — an actor told us that taking drugs affects our brains like a sizzling skillet affects an egg. The parallel comparisons don’t end there. Humankind is on fossil fuel speed — we’re using energy with reckless abandon while denying that it’s a problem.
The developing fruit on the left, in the photo pair above, is fairly normal; it’s not a beauty shot, but typical. The right side of the image shows what many Brazilian farmers were looking at last month — which is not great. “A disaster, actually,” according to Alexandre Gonzaga, my here-oft-quoted friend and colleague who also took these pictures.
Below, is a similarly paired couple of shots comparing normal flowering to some of the failed flowering that Brazilian farmers also saw last month. It wasn’t all this way, but enough to be concerned, and to wonder what was going on.
What could be going on is climate change — which would mean things might likely get worse for the next coffee crop. If it’s just a normal variation then things could turn around and get better in a year or two. To include the 2024 drought in Brazil as normal, however, would mean we need to be prepared for a much more varied range of weather patterns going forward.
The world’s coffee producers are motivated now, at record market highs, to produce and deliver as much coffee as they can… they will be shaking every available silo, bag, bucket, barrel and cookie jar for any extra beans. We might see, then, some good production, exports and short-term farm investment over the course of 2025. If Brazil’s drought of this year doesn’t repeat next year — if it was weather variation and not a more enduring shift in the climate, then coffee prices might soften somewhat over 2025. We could narrowly escape $4/lb prices, this time. We might even get back under $2/lb, this time.
Then we’ll look back, in a few years, and say, “Wow, 2024 wasn’t really Climate Change, yet, but it was a warning, wasn’t it? — How did I miss that, was I high?”
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