Coffee & climate change, a round-up story.
Every year, we drink some 400 billion cups of coffee around the world, making coffee the most widely traded agricultural commodity of the tropics. Coffee is produced by around 25 million producers, around 70% of whom are smallholder farmers directly dependent on coffee for their livelihoods.
This means that from production to commercialization and consumption, coffee affects many social and environmental realms. Like all agriculture, it also affects and is affected by climate change. This was the focus of the recent Sustainable Coffee Conference, Climate and Coffee : The heat is on !, which brought together diverse stakeholders including businesses, industry bodies, government agencies, civil society and the research community to identify the key strategies that are needed to enable the sector to adapt to the changing climate.
The Coffee Barometer, a biannual overview of developments in the industry, which was launched at the conference, notes that historical issues faced by the sector including declining productivity, terms of trade, and price volatility are compounded by climate change. Coffee cultivation is under threat in countries as diverse as Brazil, Honduras, Uganda, and Vietnam, where the area suitable for cultivation will decrease substantially as soon as 2020. This makes building resilience to increasing climate variability is the most significant challenge facing coffee farmers.
Coffee’s contribution to climate change
As a crop, coffee has been hard hit by climate change but at the same time, coffee cultivation continues to contribute to global greenhouse gas emissions. The fact that coffee is largely produced on farming communities in tropical countries and predominantly sold in coffee shops in Europe and North America means transportation alone gives coffee a high carbon footprint. In addition, the high demand for high-quality ‘fully-washed’ coffee, a methane emitting process, contributes further to coffee’s share of greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, the expansion of land under coffee cultivation and the move from shade-grown coffee systems to full-sun plantations acts as a driver for deforestation - leading to the loss of carbon normally sequestered in trees.
Lire la suite de l’article sur le site du CCAFS / Read the full article on CCAFS’ website
Source : CCAFS
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