coffee Agroforestry

Coffee is one of the agricultural sub-sectors most vulnerable to climate change (Porter, et al. 2014). Production and quality is affected by variability in rainfall and temperature. As a result many areas of conventionally farmed coffee have become unproductive and moribund. Furthermore the majority of coffee producers are smallholders, many of whom are just scraping a living from this volatile cash crop. They are often resource poor and risk adverse. As a result a common response to the declining yields and risk is for coffee farmers – large and small – to move up-hill to new, more fertile, cooler, often forested land. This migration of coffee to higher altitudes is contributing to the global loss of CO2 absorbing forests and higher emissions from abandoned coffee farms which are used for annual crops or grazing. Direct local impacts include greater soil erosion, a permanent change in the microclimate of the lower altitude lands, greater runoff, floods, landslides and damage to infrastructure and agriculture in the lowlands. The shift to higher altitudes is also leading to conflicts over land use between farmers, the departments of forestry and agriculture and environmental agencies. To address these problems, and reduce negative impacts on the environment and society (including the rural economy and livelihoods), it is proposed that permission to grow coffee on new plots in the hilly areas of the Peruvian Amazon should be conditional on maintaining (or restoring) forest cover. Unsustainable coffee farming impacts on the wellbeing of all inhabitants living in the wider watershed of the coffee farms, as well as the global issue of climate change. Failure to maintain the ecosystem within a coffee farm leads to environmental degradation that affects us all (deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and climate change (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005).