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Climate change and specialty coffee potential in Ethiopia.

ABSTRACT: Current climate change impact studies on coffee have not considered impact on coffee typicities that depend on local microclimatic, topographic and soil characteristics. Thus, this study aims to provide a quantitative risk assessment of the impact of climate change on suitability of five premium specialty coffees in Ethiopia. We implement an ensemble model of three machine learning algorithms to predict current and future (2030s, 2050s, 2070s, and 2090s) suitability for each specialty coffee under four Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs). Results show that the importance of variables determining coffee suitability in the combined model is different from those for specialty coffees despite the climatic factors remaining more important in determining suitability than topographic and soil variables. Our model predicts that 27% of the country is generally suitable for coffee, and of this area, only up to 30% is suitable for specialty coffees. The impact modelling showed that the combined model projects a net gain in coffee production suitability under climate change in general but losses in five out of the six modelled specialty coffee growing areas. We conclude that depending on drivers of suitability and projected impacts, climate change will significantly affect the Ethiopian speciality coffee sector and area-specific adaptation measures are required to build resilience.

SUBMITTER: Chemura A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8046822 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:The specialty coffee sector represents opportunities for coffee farmers and other actors due to increased value within the supply chain, driven by elevated consumer purchase prices. We investigated these relationships up to the export stage, as well as the potential for specialty coffee to improve stakeholder participation in biodiversity conservation. Household data was collected from a sample of 272 coffee farmers belonging to five primary cooperatives, in the heavily forested area of Yayu, in the Illubabor administrative zone of Oromia regional state in south-western Ethiopia, for the 2017/2018 harvest season. Qualitative and quantitative data, gathered between 2015 and 2019, from focus group discussions, was used to supplement the survey and to explain the empirical findings. We show that the income from coffee (and thus household income) can be increased, in some cases substantially, via participation in the specialty coffee market. The unit price for coffee was much higher than standard market prices and those including certification premiums. Whilst quality is a key factor for specialty coffee, income increases via the specialty market are caveat bound. In particular, there is a critical requirement for efficient and effective cooperative management, and we provide suggestions for improvements. In the long-term, more focus is needed to increase the financial and human capacities of Ethiopian coffee cooperatives, to make them more effective partners in the specialty coffee value chain. The high conversion rates from harvested to clean exportable specialty coffee (8:1, or higher) is identified as a major constraint on profitability. We show that specialty coffee can bring about positive environmental benefits. Elevating coffee prices and farm profitability to bring household income levels to around or above the global poverty line may ensure the continuation of forest coffee production, and thus the retention of forest. The increases in income via specialty coffee production, reported in the study, were achieved without increasing land use or the application of environmentally costly inputs. Moreover, analysis of satellite data shows that a large proportion of the coffee farms surveyed retain a level of forest cover and quality approaching primary (undisturbed) forest, and that the coffee production area at Yayu has not experienced any significant deforestation (since 2000). We recommend that coffee premiums linked to environmental benefit should demonstrate clearly defined and appropriate metrics, as we have demonstrated here for forest (canopy) quality and coverage (area).

Project description:Anthropogenic climate change is predicted to cause shifts in temperature and precipitation patterns that will be detrimental for global agriculture. Developing comprehensive strategies for building climate resilient agroecosystems is critical for maintaining future crop production. Arabica coffee (Coffea arabica) is highly sensitive to the quantity and timing of precipitation, so alterations in precipitation patterns that are predicted under climate change are likely to be a major challenge for maintaining coffee agroecosystems. We assessed cultivar selection as a potential component of more resilient coffee agroecosystems by evaluating water stress responses among five Arabica coffee cultivars (clonal hybrids H10 and H1 and seedling lines Catuai 44, Catuai, and Villa Sarchi) using a precipitation reduction experiment in the highlands of Tarrazú, Costa Rica. During the first harvest (eighteen months after planting), plants under the rainout treatment had 211 % greater total fruit weight and over 50 % greater biomass than under the control treatment, potentially due to protection from unusually high rainfall during this period of our experiment. At the second harvest (30 months after planting), after a year of more typical rainfall, plants under rainout still produced 66 % more fruit by weight than under control. The magnitude of the responses varied among cultivars where, at the first harvest, H10 and H1 had approximately 92 % and 81 % greater fruit production and 18 % and 22 % greater biomass, respectively, and at the second harvest H10 had 60 % more fruit production than the overall average. Thus, our findings suggest that the hybrid lines H10 and H1 are more resilient than the other cultivars to the stress of high soil moisture. Overall, our results indicate that stress due to higher than average rainfall could impair coffee plant growth and production, and that cultivar selection is likely to be an important tool for maintaining the viability of coffee production, and the resilience of global agroecosystems more generally, under climate change.

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Climate change and specialty coffee potential in Ethiopia.

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