What will we be drinking in 2100?
Now I don’t want to worry you.
Why is it when anyone says those words the immediate reaction is to worry? Well here at UK Vending we really don’t want you to panic buy products because there is no immediate panic, but scientists have recently suggested that due to our changing climate and patterns of crop growth the world’s favourite drink, coffee, could be a thing of the past by the end of the 21st Century.
See I told you nothing to worry about is there?
Our children and their children might – but we will have drunk the planet dry of coffee by the year 2100? Or will we have developed a taste for a new drink flavour instead? Oh yes, and don’t think you could replace it will tea either as the same environmental conditions that will affect coffee will, almost certainly, have a similar effect on their growing cycle too. You can also add to that list bananas, sweetcorn and kidney beans.
Scientists from the respected Royal Botantic Gardens at Kew recently published a report that says from the year 2100 up to a third of the land used to grow bananas and maize in Africa will, due to intensive farming techniques, be unviable for food production. The State of the World’s Plants report saw the work of over 80 of the world’s leading scientists in the field brought together for the first time and casts a rather worrying scenario for the future of food production. The scientists, who admittedly veered towards a somewhat gloomy prediction, said that one in five of the 391,000 known plant species were threatened with extinction.
The timeline set out by the scientists suggests that by the year 2050, only thirty four years way, many of the species would be ‘on borrowed time’. Among these would be coffee production in Ethopia, an area likely to be hardest hit by changing global climates and disease.
On the more positive side the report did state that over 2,000 new plant species are discovered every year; could one of these be developed into a new crop that will replace coffee in the future? We will have to wait and see.