Good
morning, and happy fall to you all.
Earlier
today, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest
report, a meta review of 30,000 climate change studies that offers an
comprehensive and extremely credible view of what lies ahead in our planet’s
response (or lack thereof) to this problem.
You should certainly read today’s New
York Times article on this work, and if your time permits, also the IPCC’s policymakersummary.
We
have an election on Tuesday, and I hope you will take the views of your
candidates on these very important issues into account when you make your
choices at the ballot box. We are
running out of time in continuing to elect people to office who conclude that
global warming is a liberal hoax.
As
I try to make sense of why we appear to make so damn little progress in
confronting climate change, I keep hearing that conservative politicians won’t
really wake up and smell the coffee (as it were) until the effects of global
warming become real to them. Apparently
extreme draught, bizarre storm activity, disappearing glaciers and failing global
agriculture isn’t that convincing.
A
small but meaningful example of the reality of climate change is in the world
of coffee (and the 25 million coffee farmer families around the world who
support our habit). Here’s a quote from
the spring 2014 findings of the IPCC:
"The overall predictions are for a reduction in area
suitable for coffee production by 2050 in all countries studied.”
And another quote: “In
many cases, the area suitable for production would decrease considerably with
increases of temperature of only 2.0-2.5C."
Here’s
a great video on the manifestation of this problem in Ethiopia from Kew Gardens, a
global plant research institution based in the UK (their full research report is
linked at the end of the post.
Shifting Growing Regions
An
illustration of this effect for those of us in Maine was the recent
reclassification of the “Plant
Hardiness map”, which effectively moved the state into an agricultural zone
previously applied to those living to the south of us. The Portland Press
Herald published a good
article on this shift when the new map was released.
These
climate shifts may be good news for New England farmers, in that it increases
the length of the growing season and the range of crops that can grow
here. But for coffee farmers, this
forced change brings fewer options, not more.
The
best Arabica coffees in the world grow on steep slopes at higher elevations,
and these coffees are grown by literally millions of “smallholder” farmers,
many of whom grow coffee as their primary or only crop. Climate shifts that to us are a south to
north phenomenon are for these farmers an issue of growing elevation on
mountainsides. Crops grown at lower elevations will be less productive and may
ultimately fail – and options are limited for moving to undeveloped and less
hospitable farmlands at higher elevations.
Along
with the circumstance of coffee being driven upwards and out of its element,
higher temperatures are also causing two natural enemies of coffee to
flourish.
Coffee Leaf Rust
The
leaf rust fungus is a traditional enemy of coffee, but increased temperatures
have caused it to proliferate. The
fungus, called “La Roya” (the rust) in Spanish, attacks the leaves of the
plant, weakening its natural protections and causing cherries to fall off the
plant before they reach full maturity.
The result can be devastating for a farmer, and in the 2013-14 growing
season, yields in some Central American growing regions were down 40% compared
with two years before. 200,000 farmers in Guatemala were impacted in that year.
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| Coffee leaf rust: Source: Wikipedia |
The Borer Beetle
Another
enemy of coffee that is thriving in warmer climates is the berry borer beetle (“la
broca” in Spanish), a very small insect that lays its eggs inside developing
coffee cherries. Warmer climates push
the broca from lower to higher elevations and are driving a near doubling of
its annual reproductive cycles (to as many as 10). The borer beetle was originally native to
east Africa, but its small size and difficulty of detection has now brought it
to virtually every coffee growing region.
The last to fall was the famous Kona region of Hawaii, which saw its
first brocas only in 2010. The most
effective pesticide against this menace was universally banned in 2011.
 |
| Borer Beetle: Source: sprudge.com |
 |
| Beetle damage: Source aboutcoffees.com |
Variable and Extreme Weather
Perhaps
most significant of all the impacts of climate change on coffee is an increase
in extreme weather events. Premature frosts,
draughts, excessive rain and excessive heat all play havoc on coffee growing
regions, sparing no one. For farmers,
events like these in a small growing region can vanquish a single season’s
growing in a weekend. And when they are
broader (as in 2014’s draught in Brazil), weather events can send coffee prices
skyrocketing and dramatically impact the world’s supply of coffee.
How Will the Industry Adapt?
Some part of the answer to this question will be found in
research now being conducted on new strains of coffee that will be more
resistant to pests and extreme weather. For further reading on the progress in
this area, visit World Coffee Research,
a non-profit organization based at Texas A&M University, that is working to
“create a toolbox of coffee varieties, genetic resources and accompanying
technologies and to disseminate them strategically and collaboratively in
producing countries to alleviate current and future constraints to the supply
chain of fine Arabica coffees.”
In addition to replacing current crops with new, more resistant
types of plants, efforts are being made to develop improved farming practices
including integrated pest management, prevention of soil erosion, improvement
of soil fertility, sustainable use of water sources, sustainable waste
management, prohibition of GMOs, protection of biodiversity, use of renewable
energy, and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions can also help. The training programs of Fairtrade International
are instrumental in helping smallholder coffee farmers implement these
approaches.
As individual farmers confront these challenges, many will opt
to simply replace their coffee crops with others that are easier to grow in
today’s conditions. This is actually a
fairly common practice for small farmers when cyclical swings in coffee
commodity prices forces them to grow below their costs of production.
The Worst
Case
What could happen if these efforts fail? In a recent
interview with The Guardian, Mauricio Galindo, head of operations at the
intergovernmental International Coffee Organization, stated: "In the
worst-case scenario, we will only have a few places producing coffee."
Brazil, Vietnam, Indonesia, Columbia and Ethiopia are the biggest producers and will probably have the
resources to attempt to adapt, he said. "But Central America and Laos and
Peru and Burundi and Rwanda, they are gone."
What Can we
Do?
Gosh, this is a big question, isn’t it? On a macro level, I think we need to get the
United States off its dead ass and take a leadership position in implementing
domestic and international programs that will mitigate global warming. This comes down to the steps taken by our
elected leaders – and if our leaders don’t have the courage or will to take
these steps, they need to be replaced by others who do.
As a planet, the next big step in our progress toward a global
solution to climate change will be at the 2015
United Nations Climate Change Conference (to be held next year in Paris).
Here, our leaders will make some form of commitment as to our role in this
problem going forward. Prior this
important summit, we should all demand that our elected officials ensure that
the US makes a very major commitment to leadership and progress in this
important issue.
And for coffee, just one of the many players in this drama, I
think we need to be aware that this problem is unfolding, and support the
research that could lead us to a solution.
Organizations like Fairtrade International play important roles in
researching and implementing solutions to the many facets of coffee and climate
change, and you support this work by buying FairTrade certified coffees (such
as our Guatemala, Sumatra and Road Trip!).
And however you think about these issues, please be sure to vote
on Tuesday.
Thanks for reading.
Kent
Further Reading
World Coffee Research, an industry-funded program based at Texas A&M
University with a mission to “grow the Arabica coffee supply chain in a
sustainable way through collaborative agricultural research and
development.”
