A cup of coffee is something that we, in the developed world, take for granted. Whether it’s in a jar, from a machine or consumed in a coffee shop, the idea that we can always get access to one of the world’s most popular drinks is something that we never think twice about.
But the threats and risks to the cultivation, export and roasting of coffee that result in our daily cup are real and various - and they’re increasing. Coffee beans require particular temperatures and levels of rainfall at specific times in order for them to grow and ripen, ready for harvest and roasting.
In Vietnam, for instance, the world’s second-largest producer after Brazil, prices rose last year because delays to the annual rains disrupted the drying calendar. To make matters worse, the resulting upward pressure on prices led to the theft of coffee beans from bushes. This, in turn, caused anxious farmers to harvest early, with possible detrimental effects to the quality of the beans. It’s a fragile chain of events that is repeated with other factors in other countries around the globe.
Yields in Columbia and other premier coffee regions of Latin America have fallen over recent years as a result of rising temperatures and more intense and unpredictable rainfall, associated by many scientists with climate change. Warmer, damper weather not only prevents proper growth and ripening but it encourages coffee pests and diseases such as coffee leaf rust or roya, as it is known in Latin America. In some cases farmers are switching from coffee, with all its inherent risks, to hardier crops such as plantains.
“The weather outlook for coffee growers over the next millennium is poor: it will be hotter everywhere, with prolonged dry spells in many places, interspersed with very heavy rain,” according to a report by CABI, a not-for-profit scientific organisation concerned with problems in agriculture and the environment. “Coffee grows well within a limited climatic range. As temperatures rise, so will coffee - to higher altitudes and latitudes. But space is limited and there will be competition with other crops. Coffee farmers will experience climate change through greater unpredictability, with more droughts and floods - the last thing any farmer wants.”
However, these growing threats have prompted organisations around the world to invest in a variety of projects that can help protect this valuable but vulnerable crop. The future could find solutions in the high-tech: NASA researchers are already using satellite data to produce accurate estimates of soil moisture – the main determinant of yield changes for coffee and other crops; and data too from a microwave sensor on NASA’s Aqua satellite. More down to Earth, Nescafé is providing four million coffee trees to farmers in Colombia this year and globally will provide 220 million coffee trees to farmers around the world by 2020. These will replace existing trees which are coming to end of their productive lives.
Coffee farmers will experience climate change through greater unpredictability, with more droughts and floods
Similarly, the Coffee Growers Federation in Columbia is urging farmers to switch to a newer, hardier strain of arabica that has been developed by plant breeders over the last two decades. Earlier this year the Tanzania Coffee Research Institute announced that it had discovered five new disease-resistant hybrid strains of robusta and arabica coffee beans. According to the Institute the crossbred seeds have a much higher tolerance of disease such as leaf rust.
“We’re investigating ways in which to introduce better insurance for farmers as well as helping them to diversify,” says Peter Baker, senior scientist, commodities and climate change at CABI. “Developing new strains of coffee can take 20 years so we’re looking at more immediate measures which farmers can implement, such as improving ground cover with an extra layer of mulch in order to protect against drought and soil erosion.”
Organisations such as the Rainforest Alliance also work with farmers to develop an integrated crop management system that ensures, amongst other things, a strong focus on weed control, manual weeding and ground cover. Further down the supply chain, the familiar brand name coffee shops are also becoming involved in ways to protect future harvests of coffee.
“Farms supplying Costa have facilities in place not only to save water, but also to clean the water used and to irrigate the land using the least amount of this precious resource as possible,” says Neil Cox, coffee buyer at Costa Coffee. “Farmers are trained in sustainable land use practices resulting in range of social, environmental and economic improvements.
“Grafting is the most effective way to combat certain diseases, such as nematodes,” he adds. “Here the desired [arabica] variety of coffee plant is combined with the rootstock of a nematode resistant variety like robusta. The resulting plant maintains the arabica characteristics of coffee flavour, while incorporating the disease resistant traits of the robusta plant.”
All of which sounds like progress. Until you drink the resulting beverage. The challenge, explains James Hoffman, director of Square Mile Coffee Roasters and a world barista champion, is to find a coffee that is threat-resistant but still tastes good. “Too many of the new, more sustainable strains have poor cup quality,” he argues. “Also, most beans these days are genetically very similar - which is very worrying - so there’s a move now to go back to the original Ethiopian varieties to see if we can find coffee plants with disease resistance which don’t compromise on taste.”
Of course, these environmental problems may not only have an impact on the enjoyment of your coffee. Their social consequences may be dire for many. Coffee is produced by some of the poorest farmers in the world. A stretch of unseasonably bad weather or an out break of disease which could damage the profits of western farmers can destroy the livelihoods of such people forever. Various organisations have consequently been established recently to support farmers and their families against the threats of climate change and disease. For the past 25 years Coffee Kids, a pioneer in this field, has helped producer communities identify and implement projects that provide a supplemental source of revenue or sustenance that can contribute to their family income from coffee.
“We also help them to become better farmers, mitigating the inevitable effects of climate change, population growth and competition for natural resources,” says Carolyn Fairman, Coffee Kids’ executive director. “The projects we support are in the areas of education, health and nutrition, economic diversification, food security and capacity building. Through sharing our knowledge and experience and the words of the farmers themselves, we help bring the coffee story full circle - by allowing anyone to give back and recognise their connection to coffee’s origins.”
A cup of coffee is something that we, in the developed world, take for granted. Whether it’s in a jar, from a machine or consumed in a coffee shop, the idea that we can always get access to one of the world’s most popular drinks is something that we never think twice about.
