Impacts of Climate Change on Coffee Production in Southern Minas Gerais, Brazil
Abstract
Coffee production and trade are globally important, and Brazil is the world's largest producer and second-largest consumer. However, climate change poses a major challenge to coffee production because the crop is highly sensitive to irregular rainfall distribution and temperature fluctuations. We evaluated temperature and precipitation fluctuations from 1984 to 2023 at two coffee-producing units in southern Minas Gerais, Brazil, to characterize regional climate dynamics and their impacts on coffee yield and total production. We used the Mann–Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimator to identify trends and estimate rates of change in maximum, minimum, and mean air temperature and in total, dry-season, and wet-season precipitation. We used Pearson’s and Spearman’s correlation coefficients to assess relationships between climatic and agronomic variables, selecting the appropriate coefficient based on prior Shapiro–Wilk normality tests. All temperature variables showed warming trends in September, during the transition from the dry to the wet season. Cooling trends were also detected in April, May, and December. At one production unit, dry-season rainfall declined over the historical series. At the other, precipitation declined in May but showed no trend in either the dry or wet season. Relationships between climatic and agronomic variables differed between production units: correlations were positive at one unit and negative at the other. Regionally, these trends indicate…
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