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Climate change and coffee production

Among other already-tangible effects, climate change has begun to have a negative impact on the coffee crop in Uganda:

"Climate change has affected coffee production already," said Philip Gitao, executive director of the East African Fine Coffees Association.

The crop has had less time to mature because rain is falling at the wrong times, affecting coffee quality, Gitao said. And there have been more droughts in the past two to three years than ever before.

"If the coffee beans face a lot of sunshine and less rain, the beans will be smaller and in lower yields," said Ronald Buule, a central Ugandan coffee farmer[.]

This bears particular significance for Uganda, which gets half its GDP from the coffee bean crop. If the atmosphere warms at even the low end of the IPCC estimates, Uganda will likely become almost completely unsuitable for coffee production. Sources in the article estimate that expected temperature increases could reduce Uganda's crop by 90 percent.

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Published Tuesday, July 24, 2007 7:08 PM by RussMcBee

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