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Siobhan

Climate change already affecting coffee and tea smallholder farmers

posted at 4:42pm, 12 Oct 09 by Siobhan [ 3 comments ]

Cafédirect’s three year AdapCC initiative shows that adaptation to climate change is essential, and solutions are obtainable.

If you’ve picked up the Guardian or the Irish Times over the weekend, you may have seen some coverage of Cafédirect’s pioneering AdapCC project, which you may have read about here before on the blog.

Climate change in Peru, heavy rainfall leading to landslides and flooded roads

Climate change in Peru, heavy rainfall leading to landslides and flooded roads

We’ve been working with four of our coffee and tea partners and GTZ over the past three years on a pioneering Climate Change project called AdapCC. The results are back, and  show that the next decade will see existing climatic conditions become increasingly chaotic, making many of the areas in which coffee and tea are grown unsuitable.

This prediction may seem bleak, but we’ve been working with growers to try and come up with adaptation strategies.  Focusing on four key tea and coffee growing regions around the world, AdapCC has created replicable examples of how smallholder farmers can successfully cope with the impacts of climate change and improve their access to financial and technical support.

AdapCC Workshops in Kenya

AdapCC Workshops in Kenya

Coffee and tea production are among the first and most serious agricultural casualties of climate change, because crops tend to grow only within a very limited subtropical climatic range. Rising temperatures and changing patterns of precipitation will have a devastating impact for many countries – such as Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Nicaragua – that depend on tea and coffee as an vitally important export. And many regions are already suffering its serious effects. It is estimated that a change of only 1C would cost the world’s biggest coffee grower, Brazil, more than $113m per year .

The AdapCC research has shown a link between yields and increasingly unpredictable rainfall and temperature patterns.  As a result of these changes, the quality and quantity of yields is predicted to decrease across each of the four regions.

Smallholder growers, by whom the majority of the world’s coffee is farmed, will without doubt be worst affected. Calculations suggest that growers in some regions could see their annual incomes slashed by up to 90%  over the next decade and a half.

Climate change means increasing pests, as seen on this coffee plant in Peru.

Climate change means increasing pests, as seen on this coffee plant in Peru.

Developed over three years, in four countries – Kenya, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua – AdapCC is the first programme of its kind to pioneer a regionally-specific practical response to climate change.  Working with a coalition of local producers and international experts in each region, AdapCC has worked directly with the grower communities to collaboratively develop a range of technical and financial strategies to cope with increasingly chaotic farming conditions. In some regions such as Kenya this means diversifying into other crops, such as passion fruit, using land to sell carbon credits in Peru, or improving water planning or cultivating native tree species to bind soil structures and prevent mudslides.

To learn more, take a look at these articles in the Guardian and the Irish Times, or the press release on our website.

We’re really keen to know what you think of climate change, adaptation and Copenhagen, so share your thoughts with your comments below.

Comments

  1. Cafédirect HQ says:
    October 20, 2009 at 6:03 pm

    Hi Eric

    Many thanks for your query and interest in AdapCC. It’s great to be able to connect to people internationally – the internet is a wonderful thing! I’ve sent through and email with our press release and some information about AdapCC, but I thought I’d share this information with other people that read the blog.

    The best place to start to find out more information about AdapCC is the website, http://www.adapcc.org. The 3 year project is a public-private partnership so GTZ and Cafédirect are publishing the findings and progress reports there. It includes the latest newsletters, a project concept and topic sheets for the pilot groups. There is also a press release at http://tinyurl.com/yz84l3y

    In terms of the criteria for the pilot groups, a variety of criteria were established to identify them which included:
    - synergy/ potential of other contributing partners
    - availability of data
    - severeness of current climate impact

    This lead to the selection Michimikuru in Kenya as the African partner, which does not mean that Tanzania is not affected, we just didn’t have the resources to cover all of Cafédirect’s producer partners and countries. We are now seeking to roll out this project from these four initial pilot groups to all 40 producer partners although obviously this will take some time and additional funding. The next steps to achieve this is via workshops that are running in Kenya, Peru and Mexico, sharing the results with producer partners.

    Climate change does indeed also affect the Tanzanian coffee and tea farmers, however site-specific, participatory risk and opportunity assessments are required in order to actually design meaningful adaptation strategies for them.

    I hope that this helps to answer your questions and that you find the website a useful source of information and background material.

    All the best

    Jacquie Bance

  2. Eric Toroka says:
    October 18, 2009 at 2:46 pm

    To whom it may concern,

    I just want to congratulate for the nice piece.
    Well, i know Tanzania is your member e.g Rungwe Smallholder Tea Growers Association (RSTGA), but what is the criteria used to carry out such a good research to Kenya-which is a neighbouring country, Mexico, Peru and Nicaragua?

    2). What is your comments, sugestions in regarding to the Climate change that causing havoc to coffee and tea farmers in Tanzania?

    Please could you respond through my email (toroka27@hotmail.com).

    With regards,
    Eric Toroka,
    Business Times journalist,
    Box 71439,
    Dar es Salaam,
    Tanzania.
    +255 787 22 82 87
    Email: toroka27@hotmail.com
    website: http://www.businesstimes.co.tz

  3. Tweets that mention Cafédirect | Fairtrade Coffee, Tea & Cocoa Products | Climate change already affecting coffee and tea smallholder farmers -- Topsy.com says:
    October 13, 2009 at 2:55 am

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bex and janinewoodward. janinewoodward said: RT @Cafedirect_HQ great article on how climate change is affecting coffee/tea farmers http://bit.ly/aqvbI. Roll on #COP15! [...]