lower risk of heart disease and premature death. but some coffee crops are being threatened now by changes in the environment. mark phillips has tonight s climate diaries. reporter: to many, it s the other dark liquid that powers the world coffee. but because of the damage being done to the planet by the primary dark liquid oil, along with other fossil fuels coffee is in trouble, and so are the farmers who grow it. is this a good harvest year or not so good? it is not so good. reporter: up here in the mountains of eastern uganda, coffee is the most important thing they grow. anthony and vincent khabala s family have been growing it on their farm, about 4,000 feet up the sloams of mount elgon, for generations. lately, though, they ve been having problems they ve never had before. it turnlz out, coffee is as fussy as the people who drink it. it likes the right altitude, the right temperature, and the right
sorry newton, not everything has to fall. see before & afters at juvederm.com. juvéderm voluma®. defy gravity. honestly, the off-season isn t i ve got a lot to do. that s why i got my surface. it s great for watching game film and drawing up plays. it s got onenote, so i can stay on top of my to-do list, which has been absolutely absurd since the big game. with skype, it s just really easy to stay in touch with the kids i work with. alright, russell you are good to go! alright, fellas. alright, russ. back to work! jeff: it is a devastating coffee disease in latin america that has already done a billion dollars in damage. soon it could be raising the cost of coffee worldwide. and now it s prompting the u.s. government to act. here s anne-marie green.
reporter: it s called coffee rust, a fungus that is devastating some of the best arabica coffee beans in latin and central america. coffee growers in guatemala, el salvador, honduras, panama and costa rica have been hit the hardest. this is a disease that has been around for a long time. we believe that hotter and dryer growing conditions related to a changing climate is making it more prevalent. rajiv shah is the administrator of the u.s. agency for international development. in it s worst form it actually destroys the trees and prevents the future years from having agricultural output on those farms. reporter: many high-end coffee beans are grown on small farms by farmers who can t afford fungicides and lack the special training needed to avoid contamination. researchers say that coffee production in the affected areas will decrease by 15% to 40% in the coming years, severely impacting families. millions of kids would go hungry. economies throughout the region
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