You can believe in it or not, but global warming sucks and has consequences.
Due to climate changes, particularly temperature increases in South America, coffee harvests are suffering. The NYT/MSNBC has previously noted that average temperatures in Columbia have increased one degree over the past 30 years. Combined with drought cycles and wet cycles, and even extreme wet cycles, have created a prime environment for fungus outbreaks and pest invasions of Columbian and other South American coffee harvests: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42003896/ns/business-the_new_york_times/
The result of all this mess have been lower crop yields and increasing futures. This figure from TradingCharts illustrates how coffee futures rapidly increased as 2010 came to a close: http://tfc-charts.w2d.com/historical/CF/2010/0/continuous.html
Today, Starbucks raised the prices on supermarket coffee by 12%. Concurrently, Kraft, (the company that Starbucks loves to hate on a legal level), raised prices on Maxwell House (Robusta bean) by 22%. http://chicagobreakingbusiness.com/2011/03/starbucks-raises-grocery-packaged-coffee-prices.html
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