In the future coffee will be a luxury

Coffee could become a luxury in the future because of climate change. That is the worrying conclusion of many people in the industry as farmers in Peru are struggling to harvest healthy crops.

Fairtrade, the organisation that monitors the world’s supply of healthy food stuffs has insisted that if we don’t invest heavily now, we will have less than 50 percent of the useful crop growing lands around the world as we do today. That lack of space will, inevitably, lead to shortages and higher prices of items we take for granted today.

The poorest farmers are being hit hardest because they cannot invest profits in tools to improve the soil or buy new plants. Some have returned to growing the coca plant, the raw material for cocaine.

Extreme rainfall two years ago destroyed crops and caused buildings to crumple in the north west region  of Piura, many farmers in the region now say that the area may eventually become uninhabitable.