Climate Change and Coffee Beans
In Climate Change and Coffee Beans, presenter Cherry Healey visits a coffee historian to learn how climate change is impacting one of the most popular coffee beans, the Arabica bean. Then she looks through a coffee archive to learn how the coffee of the past might help us create a coffee bean that can withstand and thrive in a hotter climate. This video is excerpted from BBC’s Inside the Factory, a series that takes viewers behind the scenes in the factories that make our favorite products.
Lesson Express
Q: How is climate change impacting coffee plantations?
A: Areas of drought are impacting how coffee grows. The temperature is changing and the rainfall is changing which impacts how well coffee grows and where coffee grows best.
Q: How are coffee farmers responding to climate change?
A: They are moving coffee plants farther up hills to provide the conditions coffee plants need to grow.
Q: How are scientists using information from the past to inform the future?
A: Scientists are studying coffee plants from the past to learn about coffee plants that did grow in hotter climates that might be able to be grown in changing climates.
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