Something unsettling is happening in the best coffee-growing regions of the world

coffee beans
A man collects coffee berries at the Nogales farm in Jinotega. Oswaldo Rivas/Reuters

Hold onto your favorite beans: The coffee industry is under serious threat.

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Around the world, warming temperatures are creating a flurry of new problems for coffee plants and their producers. Some farmers are seeing their most fertile growing regions become ravaged.

Tech Insider recently spoke with Sam Lewontin, a KRUPS ambassador, champion barista, and expert on all things coffee to get a taste of what the future of coffee looks like.

According to Lewontin, here are two of the biggest changes that will rattle the coffee world as temperatures continue to climb.

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The best places to grow coffee are shifting and shrinking.

Coffee irrigation system
A Brazilian coffee producer adjusts an irrigation system in his farm in Santo Antonio do Jardim. Paulo Whitaker/Reuters

Coffee plants are very finicky about where they'll grow best. The tastiest beans come from plants that are not only cultivated in tropical environments, but in terrain that sits at high elevations — ideally 1,300 to 1,400 meters above sea level, Lewontin said.

The warm days and cold nights typical of this mountainous yet tropical environment "shock" the natural chemicals that make coffee taste delicious into the bean. That delicious blend of flavors then gets released into your cup when you brew.

But with warmer-than-normal days and nights as global temperatures rise, the traditional narrow band of arable coffee land in the tropics — such as in Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, India, and Ethiopia — is starting to shift away from the equator.

And it gets worse. In the coming years, as the planet gets warmer and warmer, Lewontin said, the arable coffee zone is going to shift "up the mountain" to higher and higher elevations.

"The range of altitude in places that have been considered to be strong coffee origins is narrowing," Lewontin said.

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Coffee plants are becoming more susceptible to horrible diseases.

coffee beans affected by roya
Costa Rican coffee beans affected by the tree-killing fungus known as roya or "coffee rust." Juan Carlos Ulate/Reuters

Warmer temperatures also bring ideal conditions for plant-killing diseases to thrive. One of the most alarming diseases in the coffee world right now is called the "coffee leaf disease" or "coffee rust." It's also referred to as "roya," the Spanish word for rust.

This fungus does exactly what you'd think: It overwhelms a coffee plants' leaves with rust spots, which eventually spread to the entire plant, destroying its leaves.

"This means that they can't grow, which means that they can't produce viable fruit, which means they can't produce viable seeds, which is a problem if you want to have delicious coffee," Lewontin said.

Many regions known for producing specialty coffees have already been hit hard by roya, including even the highest altitude regions in Central America.

Producers are losing entire farms, and as the climate warms, the fungus is likely to spread to more and more regions that we've long thought to be immune.

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What can we do to fix this?

coffee drinking
Getty Images/Justin Sullivan

The good news is that coffee-producing countries around the world are working hard to adapt.

Some regions are shifting the zones in which they cultivate coffee, and others are experimenting with new coffee hybrids that are delicious yet resistant to some of the nastiest warm-weather diseases.

It's going to be challenging to thwart the — dare I say — "coffeepocalypse," but Lewontin is optimistic that we'll have this delicious drink for years to come.

"We’re in kind of a tricky spot," Lewontin said. "But I remain optimistic that these things will see us through and that we will still, in 20 years, have coffee."

Climate Change
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