Your morning coffee is getting cooked by climate change

By Francis Allan L. Angelo

That iced latte you’re sipping right now? It’s getting harder to make and more expensive to buy — and climate change is a big reason why.

A new analysis from Climate Central, published Feb. 18, found that every single one of the 25 major coffee-growing countries it studied experienced more “coffee-harming heat” between 2021 and 2025 because of carbon pollution. These countries produce 97% of the world’s coffee. All of them are getting hotter. And the Philippines is getting hit harder than most.

Iloilo’s coffee farms are spending more than half the year under dangerous heat — and climate change is responsible for most of it. Climate Central data shows that the province, the country’s fifth-largest coffee producer at 5,736 metric tons in 2023, recorded an average of 186 days per year between 2021 and 2025 when temperatures exceeded 30°C (86°F).

Of those, a staggering 121 days were directly added by climate change. That is nearly four months of extreme heat every year that simply would not exist without carbon pollution.

The 30°C threshold is the point at which arabica coffee plants suffer real damage and even hardier robusta varieties start to struggle. And Iloilo’s 121 extra heat days far exceed the Philippine national average of 71, putting the province among the hardest-hit coffee-growing areas not just in the country but in the entire 25-country, 532-district dataset.

It’s worse than anything recorded in Brazil’s top coffee state, Minas Gerais, which logged 67 extra days. It’s worse than Vietnam’s Central Highlands. The convergence of high production volume and severe climate-driven heat raises urgent questions about whether Iloilo can sustain its coffee output in the years ahead.

The province is hardly alone. Across the Visayas and Mindanao, the numbers are brutal. Misamis Occidental recorded 150 extra heat days per year, North Cotabato had 140, Southern Leyte logged 137, and Leyte came in at 136.

When Climate Central’s data is cross-referenced with the top coffee-producing provinces, the overlap between high output and severe heat exposure is striking. Sultan Kudarat, the country’s largest producer by volume at 21,442 metric tons, saw 77 extra heat days. Davao del Sur, fourth-largest at 7,713 metric tons, experienced 103. Cavite, home to the liberica heartland of Amadeo and third-largest at 8,190 metric tons, had 80. Batangas, the birthplace of Philippine coffee and eighth-largest at 3,658 metric tons, recorded 75. The provinces growing the most coffee are also the ones getting cooked the fastest.

Nationally, the Philippines ranked sixth among all 25 coffee-growing countries studied, with 71 extra days of coffee-harming heat per year. That’s ahead of Brazil, the world’s largest producer at 37% of global supply, which had 70. It’s ahead of Vietnam at 59, Colombia at 48, and Ethiopia at 34. For a country that produces all four commercially viable coffee varieties — arabica, robusta, liberica (barako), and excelsa — and once ranked as the world’s fourth-largest coffee exporter in the 1880s, that ranking should set off alarm bells.

The global picture is no less grim. Climate Central found that every one of the 25 countries it analyzed, accounting for 97% of world coffee production, experienced more coffee-harming heat over the past five years because of climate change.

The top five producers — Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Ethiopia, and Indonesia — supply 75% of global coffee and now endure more than 144 days of harmful heat per year on average. Without climate change, 57 of those days would not exist. Across all 25 countries, the average was 47 extra days annually. El Salvador topped the list at 99, followed by Nicaragua at 77 and Thailand at 75.

Coffee prices have already responded. Global prices hit record highs in December 2024 and again in February 2025, driven partly by a 2023 drought in Brazil and escalating heat across the bean belt. Arabica, which makes up 60% to 70% of world supply, is particularly fragile — even temperatures between 25°C and 30°C are suboptimal for its growth, meaning the 30°C threshold used in this study is actually a conservative benchmark.

The spread of pests like coffee leaf rust and the coffee berry borer, shifting rainfall, and the projected loss of up to half of all coffee-suitable farmland by 2050 compound the threat. The Philippines knows how fast the industry can crater — a coffee rust outbreak collapsed Batangas plantations by 1891, ending an era when the country was a global export power.

There are ways to fight back, though none of them are magic bullets. Shade-grown coffee — where taller trees provide a canopy over coffee plants — can buffer crops from extreme heat while enriching soil and supporting biodiversity.

The Smithsonian’s Bird Friendly® certification program already recognizes farmers using such practices. But adaptation alone won’t solve a problem rooted in carbon emissions. As long as the planet keeps warming, the bean belt keeps shrinking.

For a country like the Philippines, where coffee culture runs deep and smallholder farmers depend on the crop for their livelihoods, this is not another environmental story but an economic one, a food security one, and a generational one.

The generation that turned café culture into a lifestyle may be the same generation that watches it become a luxury. The uncomfortable truth is this: climate change is not coming for your coffee. It already came. In Iloilo, it arrived 121 extra heat days ago.