NBC News recently published an article asserting that climate change is driving up coffee prices by adversely affecting production titled “Your daily cup of coffee could get more expensive because of climate change.” [emphasis, links added]
Production data proves this claim blatantly false.
NBC News writes:
The price of arabica coffee beans, the high-quality beans found in most restaurants and shops, spiked this month, recently jumping to $3.50 a pound.
…
And today, experts say, climate change is to blame.
“We’ve seen significant drought in some of the key coffee-growing areas in the world, places like Brazil, which is the largest coffee exporter in the world,” said David Ortega, a professor of food economics and policy at Michigan State University.
…
“We’re going to see these types of [climate] events just get more frequent into the future. And so we have to start taking this seriously and make investments in agricultural research and development to be able to mitigate and tackle the impacts of climate change on our agricultural production and agricultural system,” Ortega said.
“One impact of this is a rise in cost, which then gets translated to a rise in price for consumers,” he added.
NBC’s article attributes recent coffee price increases to climate change by pointing to specific weather events. This approach wrongly conflates short-term weather phenomena with long-term climate patterns.
As discussed at Climate at a Glance, weather refers to short-term atmospheric conditions, while climate denotes long-term averages and trends.
Attributing isolated weather events directly to climate change without considering broader climatic data is misleading and scientifically unsound, especially when long-term weather trends show no worsening conditions in coffee-growing regions.
NBC’s story also ignores substantial data demonstrating that global coffee production has increased significantly over the past four decades, a fact that Climate Realism has addressed multiple times, highlighting the fact that coffee production has been resilient and even thriving despite concerns over climate change.
Repeated analyses show that both coffee and cocoa have set production records multiple times during the recent period of slight warming, contradicting assertions that climate change is driving price increases.
For example, global coffee production has seen substantial growth over the past 40 years, as data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reveals, with countries like Vietnam experiencing a more than 1,500 percent rise in production between 1992 and 2022.
Vietnam is not alone. Almost every coffee-growing region has experienced significant growth, as the graph below shows:
This upward trend underscores the adaptability and resilience of coffee cultivation practices, even amid the gradual warming experienced globally.
NBC’s portrayal of climate change as a primary driver of rising coffee prices reflects a bias by the media outlet toward blaming nearly every bad thing that occurs on climate change.
NBC wrongly aggregates short-term weather events and long-term climate trends, and more importantly, ignores the fact that coffee production has increased significantly over recent decades, regularly setting records for production.
Rather than looking at actual data, NBC News relied on “expert opinion” without any factual basis. Such sloppy reporting lacks due diligence and fails to provide a comprehensive view of the factors influencing coffee prices, including economic dynamics and agricultural practices.
NBC News completely failed to consider these data and variables, instead resorting to a tired and worn-out false climate catastrophe narrative.
Top photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash
Read more at Climate Realism
