ADDIS ABABA:- Climate change could wipe out more than half of Ethiopia’s coffee production unless farmers move to higher ground, scientists warned Monday. Climbing temperatures and dwindling rainfall have already degraded prime growing areas, such as the Zege Peninsula, they reported in the journal Nature Plants. If global warming continues unabated, up to 60 percent of land currently used to grow coffee beans will be unsuitable for production by the last three decades of the century.

“A ‘business-as-usual’ approach could be disastrous for the Ethiopia coffee economy in the long-term,” said Justin Moat, a professor at the University of Nottingham and lead author of the study. But the new research uncovered a silver lining: a timely and well-planned transition to other regions could not only save the country’s largest source of export revenue, it could quadruple land under cultivation, the researchers found.