Brazil Shifting to Robusta as Arabica Variety Suffers from Low Output

In the coming years, coffee from Brazil may start to taste a bit different. The South American nation is the world’s biggest producer of arabica, a mild variety of coffee bean.

For Brazil, robusta presents an opportunity to remain the world’s largest coffee supplier despite worsening climate conditions.

But as climate change makes it harder to grow arabica, some farmers are turning to robusta, which produces a more bitter bean but is more tolerant of higher temperatures and resistant to diseases, Renata Carlos Daou reported for Bloomberg News.

Brazil’s traditional arabica-growing regions have faced increasingly intense and frequent droughts, along with rising temperatures.

Arabica remains the country’s main coffee export, but robusta production is growing faster—up more than 81% over the past decade, according to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which tracks global coffee production.

For Brazil, robusta presents an opportunity to remain the world’s largest coffee supplier despite worsening climate conditions, said Fernando Maximiliano, Coffee Market Intelligence Manager at StoneX.

“It wasn’t necessarily demand that resulted in the growth of robusta production,” he said. “In reality, climate problems and losses in arabica were the main factors that contributed to stimulating robusta growth.”

Over the past three years, arabica production in Brazil has grown at roughly 2% to 2.5% annually, while robusta has risen around 4.8% per year.

This year’s growing season saw a nearly 22% surge in robusta, marking a record harvest, according to StoneX. Analysts said robusta has proved more resilient to harsh weather and more profitable—helping it stand out in an increasingly volatile climate.