Coffee and Climate Change
Originally published September of 2020
It all comes back to clean water. Coffee is grown in mountain areas of tropical countries. The best coffee grows above 1500 meters above sea level. In central Honduras there are many mountain ranges that are separated from each other by wide valleys. Rivers flow from the mountains, bringing water to the valleys, where millions of people use the water for irrigation, household uses, and hydroelectric power. Without the water from the mountains, central Honduras would be uninhabitable. With the water, it is an oasis for humans, agriculture, and wildlife.
When clouds come in from the north coast of Honduras, the mountain ranges block the clouds and the moisture from the clouds condenses on the surfaces of all the leaves of trees, ferns, and mosses in the mountain forests. These forests are known as “cloud forests” because they capture so much of this horizontal precipitation. The water sinks down into the aquifers and exits the mountain through springs, which form the rivers which are the lifeblood of the country.
Farmer to Farmer buys all of our Honduran coffee from a co-op called COFEACOMA. The mountain range where the coffee is grown by COFEACOMA is known as Comayagua mountain, and there are seven major rivers that come from the mountain range. The top part of the mountain above 1800 meters above sea level is a National Park. It was designated as a park to protect the cloud forest. Without the cloud forest, the clouds would pass by without leaving their precious water, drying up the springs. We have seen it happen locally on the mountain, where communities have not protected their forests, and their springs have become seasonal. Worse still, when there is rain, there is no forest to slow the rain and absorb it. Without a forest, the rain runs off and causes landslides and floods. A few years ago, a COFEACOMA member lost her daughter and son-in-law to a landslide caused by a freak storm. With global climate change, these extreme storms are more and more common. Climate change is real and dangerous to these people.
The cloud forests of central Honduras are vibrant green jewels within a landscape of dry pine forests and semi-desert valleys. They are full of wildlife and rich in a huge diversity of plants, birds, and insects. All this is at stake due to climate change. Under climate change, we are seeing warmer temperatures in the tropics. It means that coffee diseases that used to not be a problem, because coffee was grown in the cool mountains, are beginning to cause more problems for coffee growers. It means insects, which used to only have one or two generations in a season, are cycling through three or four generations in longer, warmer seasons. It means that droughts are worse, and floods are worse. Climate change is putting coffee farms at risk in many ways.
One of the ways that farms are responding to climate change is to move up the mountain. They are planting coffee higher and higher, in places where it used to be too cold to grow. Farmers are cutting down cloud forests to plant more coffee, even in protected areas. In the end, there may be no forest left to capture the clouds and refill the aquifers. Honduras is already experiencing power outages during the dry season, as the hydroelectric dams’ reservoirs go down and down. Towns in the valleys are rationing potable water, and irrigation canals are drying up.
There is another way. When representatives from Farmer to Farmer visited the farms of COFEACOMA in January of 2020, we saw farms where the coffee is growing beneath forests of shade trees. The farmers are protecting the springs on their farms. The farms are creating local microclimates that are cool and shady. These farmers are also protecting the wildlands above their villages, because that is where they get their own water. The farmers are teaching each other organic ways to keep their plants healthy, and be better able to resist disease and insect pressure. Growing coffee organically can help farmers resist the worst impacts of climate change.
Coffee prices worldwide have been at a standstill for the last twenty years. Even as all of the expenses have risen, and even as climate change has affected yields, prices have stayed stubbornly low. To combat low prices, farmers worldwide have been planting more and more coffee, in order to make up for low prices by increasing the quantity of production. Wherever possible, big coffee farms have been investing in mechanized harvest equipment. While this might be a solution on the scale of a single farm, it has been a disaster for prices globally, keeping prices low, even as worldwide demand rises. It has also been a disaster for the remaining cloud forests of Central America, and all the clean water they provide for people.
When coffee prices are low, and pressure from diseases and insects grows, it forces small farms to sell to big farms. Low coffee prices can depress the economy for an entire region. Families move to cities. The cities of Honduras are dangerous places, so many people try to emigrate to the United States.
Farmer to Farmer is committed to paying above fair trade prices. We can do this because we purchase directly from the farmers. Our farmers hand-pick their coffee on steep hillsides which will never be able to be machine harvested. These farmers select only the best beans to send to us and dry them in hoophouses on screens to maintain the best flavor profile. Each farm’s coffee is kept separate in microlots, because each part of the mountain yields a different tasting coffee.
In addition to paying high prices, Farmer to Farmer is a non-profit organization that returns income from the coffee sales to farmers in the form of support for education for young people.
We can do more. People in the United States are responsible for a disproportionate amount of carbon emissions. We drive a lot. We live in big homes that we heat and cool by mostly burning fossil fuels. We consume food that is grown using chemical fertilizers made using natural gas. We eat a lot of meat and dairy, which has a high carbon footprint. We travel by airplane. Our recreation often involves burning fossil fuels. Our government and industries are facilitating carbon pollution, and we can put [pressure on them. We are causing global climate change, and we are affecting people in Honduras and other tropical countries. They are experiencing more droughts, more floods, and unpredictable growing conditions. We can do more. What will you do?
