Taking the strain

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.