Coffee growers are dealing with a lot right now.
Most immediately, the Trump administration's tariffs, which threaten their sales, add to the ongoing challenges of pests and diseases for coffee production. In the longer term, experts say the coffee industry can't continue with business as usual. Growers face a waning labor force, and the areas where coffee can reliably grow are poised to shrink dramatically.
While your morning cup isn't going away anytime soon, it could become more expensive — and could taste different, too.
In honor of International Coffee Day on Oct. 1, we're taking stock of the world of coffee and what to expect in the years to come.
Climate change is shrinking the land where coffee can grow
Due to the effects of climate change, the land suitable for coffee farming could shrink by 50% by 2050, according to a 2014 study. The analysis found that "highly productive areas" in the two largest coffee-producing countries in the world, Brazil and Vietnam, "may become unsuitable for coffee in the future."
Much of the coffee in the U.S. comes from Brazil. If you're fond of specialty coffee, it could have come from Colombia, Central America, or Ethiopia. Ethiopia, for example, could see a 21% loss of coffee-growing area with warming temperatures, according to researchers.
"Climate change, climate change, climate change," is the top problem facing coffee-producing regions, says Sara Morrocchi, the founder and CEO of coffee consulting company Vuna.
She works with farmers who face rising temperatures, erratic rainfall patterns, floods and droughts.
Arabica is the main variety of coffee sold in the U.S. It grows at higher elevations, typically 1,200 meters above sea level or higher.
But "as the planet is heating up, some of the lower elevation [areas] where arabica used to grow very well, it's just not ideal anymore," Morrocchi says. Farmers are having to plant even higher in the mountains to escape the heat.
Jeremy Haggar, a professor of agroecology at the University of Greenwich who has spent decades researching coffee in Central America, says temperature isn't the only concern related to climate change — drought is a big one.
"Coffee is, I would say, quite a resilient crop," he says. "It does grow under quite a range of climatic conditions, but obviously there are limits to that." He says one year in Nicaragua the dry season was extra long and he saw "the whole system start to collapse." The coffee plants were defoliating, and trees planted to give shade and shield the coffee from the heat of the sun started to die as well.
With climate change making weather more unpredictable, Morrocchi says the threats to coffee production are "only going to get worse."
"It's just a miracle that we still have plants producing coffee," she says.
Coffee farmers are in a bind
There are steps farmers can take to try to mitigate some effects of climate change, such as planting more shade trees and diversifying crops, but they often can't afford to do so.
In many countries, coffee farmers often live at or below the poverty line. And on top of that, the price of coffee set on the international market is variable and doesn't take into account the cost of production. Farmers need to plan far ahead, as coffee plants can take a few years to bear fruit, which is hard to do when you don't know what the price of coffee will be in a few years, Haggar says.
"Higher fertilizer prices, increased wage costs or the impacts of climate extremes … new pests and diseases, all of those things require investment," he says.
Financial pressures, migration and harsh working conditions are also leading to shortages of farmworkers.
Farmers are getting older and younger generations don't want to carry on the business when they see their parents struggling to get by, Morrocchi says.
"You look at their livelihoods and you're not surprised that [their children] decided to leave the rural areas and go to the city and try something else."
Experts NPR spoke to said the way coffee is sold on the international market prevents many farmers from having a decent standard of living. Even when coffee prices are at their highest, farmers often don't see enough of a profit to stay afloat.
Morrocchi says many farmers today are "stuck in this cycle of production and extraction that they can't get off."
The situation today has roots in slavery and colonialism, experts say, when European powers enslaved Africans to work on tropical coffee plantations.
Shawn Steiman, a coffee scientist and consultant with Coffea Consulting, says that in coffee-growing countries, "their products have never been about them growing it for their peers. The products have always been really cheap and at the expense of the standard of living of those people."
With the amount of labor involved — from growing, processing and drying to shipping across the world and then roasting — "it's crazy how cheap it is," says Morrocchi. "It was never meant to be cheap and it was never meant to be mass-consumed by us."
The flavors of the future
Coffee producers have no immediate plans to move away from arabica, coffee experts said. But researchers are already planning for what comes next as temperatures increase.
The coffee world has been buzzing about recent research into a lesser-known coffee species called stenophylla. It's been found in Sierra Leone and can tolerate hotter temperatures than arabica. And notably, it has a similar taste.
Haggar, who has researched stenophylla, says it's still being tested for how it grows and can be cultivated.
"Most domesticated crops have undergone decades, if not centuries of selection for higher performing materials. And we're obviously only just at the start of that," he says. Researchers also plan to study how it could be cross-bred with other coffee species.
Stenophylla production would also need to be economical for production to be scaled up, or else it could remain a niche product, he says.
Two other little-known coffee varieties, excelsa and liberica, are also experiencing a renewed interest due to their climate resilience. They're being grown in a handful of countries.
And robusta, the second-most grown coffee variety in the world, is gaining ground on arabica, from about 25% of global production in the early 1990s to more than 45% today. It has origins in sub-Saharan Africa and today Vietnam is the biggest producer.
Arabica drinkers may consider robusta to have a bitter and earthy taste. It's less expensive to grow and is often used in instant coffee. But some coffee-growing areas are switching from arabica to robusta because it can better withstand higher temperatures.
Andrés Montenegro, sustainability director of the Specialty Coffee Association, a trade association for independent coffee shops, thinks there's potential for robusta to capture some arabica drinkers if marketed well.
"We're seeing more innovations in robusta processing to improve flavor," he says, with "consumers being aware of that and paying premium prices for those new robusta beans."
Another option that could gain steam is synthetic coffee, which is made without beans. A synthetic espresso currently on the market, made of date seeds and other plant-based ingredients, tastes just like the real thing, according to one reporter's taste test.
Arabica will still be available for many years to come, and farmers are finding ways to adapt in the short term.
But coffee drinkers will also need to adapt, says Steiman, as more varieties become mainstream: "We need to broaden our horizon of what the taste experience can be."
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