Moos’ Blog


Bio­di­ver­sity Counts!
Obser­va­tions and opin­ions con­cern­ing zoos, evo­lu­tion, nature con­ser­va­tion and the way we treat/​support the ecosys­tems which are sup­posed to serve us.


201125Dec11:00

The Cof­fee berry borer bee­tle threat­ens the world, part two

Infor­ma­tion
pub­lished 25 Decem­ber 2011 | mod­i­fied 18 Decem­ber 2016

World’s best cof­fee pro­duc­ing plan­ta­tions are fac­ing a dark future. They will be destroyed by the Cof­fee berry borer bee­tle (Hypothen­e­mus ham­pei), unless pre­ven­tive mea­sures are taken. Sci­en­tists who made me ner­vous two years ago with their find­ings on this cof­fee destroyer bug, now pro­vide addi­tional evi­dence about the impact of this bee­tle and pre­dict fur­ther future spread. This does not look promis­ing for cof­fee lovers, absolutely not.

Based on cli­mate change sce­nar­ios they pre­dict that cal­cu­lated hypo­thet­i­cal num­ber of gen­er­a­tions per year of H. ham­pei will increase in all ara­bica cof­fee (the best cof­fee there is!)pro­duc­ing areas from five to ten. These out­comes will have seri­ous impli­ca­tions for ara­bica cof­fee pro­duc­tion and liveli­hoods in East Africa. The sci­en­tists sug­gest that the best way to adapt to a rise of tem­per­a­tures in cof­fee plan­ta­tions could be via the intro­duc­tion of shade trees in sun grown plan­ta­tions. Fur­ther­more they draft an out­line for the devel­op­ment of an adap­ta­tion strat­egy pack­age for cli­mate change on cof­fee pro­duc­tion. I would like to call on all — gov­ern­ments, NGOs, fel­low cof­fee lovers, any­body — and have them promise that they will do the utmost to safe mankind from this evil destroyer. We must win this bat­tle! So, help the cof­fee pro­duc­ers in Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Burundi sur­vive. When they sur­vive, we sur­vive, the world survives!


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