At the current rate temperatures are rising, there could be at least a 30 percent net loss in land suitable to farm coffee in Mexico and Central America by 2050 forcing many farmers to turn to different crops, said Peter Laderach, a lead researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture.
Laderach, whose organization is based in Colombia, is leading a team of scientists who started studying 7,000 small farms in Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and Nicaragua in 2009 and has based his estimate on data collected so far.
The researchers map the farms with satellite positioning devices to collect data on altitude and crop production. That information is then cross-referenced with climate change models to track how different areas will be affected by hotter weather and changes in rainfall.
Greenhouse gas emissions could heat the earth’s surface by between 1-6 degrees Celsius over the next 100 years, according to the United Nations, forcing farmers of all kinds of crops to change habits.