Every day, we drink more than 2 billion cups of coffee worldwide, by some estimates, and demand continues to grow.
To grow the grains that quench this thirst, more and more forests have been cut down globally for agriculture. But in an ecological and agricultural irony, as more forests are destroyed to grow coffee, the more the crop’s long-term prospects are threatened by changes in rainfall, according to a new report from Coffee Watch, a non-governmental organization that monitors the industry.
The group, whose results were published on Wednesday, mapped deforestation in the coffee belt of southeastern Brazil and compared it with changes in rainfall and crop failures in the same region. It found that as companies destroyed local forests to make way for plantations, rainfall in these areas decreased, which led to crop failures, lower productivity and, ultimately, higher prices for consumers.
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“The ecologically destructive way we grow coffee will result in us having no coffee,” said Etelle Higonnet, director of the group.
“Deforestation for coffee cultivation is killing the rains, which are killing the coffee,” he said in a telephone interview. If the trend continues, he added, farmers will produce less even as more forests are destroyed to make room for more crops.
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The report argues that clearing forests to meet demand for coffee will worsen rainfall patterns that are already reducing farmers’ productivity. (Coffee production is at risk because the crop is highly sensitive to rainfall patterns and not very resilient to drought.)
The report’s conclusions are in line with findings by Brazilian scientists published in the journal Nature Communications last month. The study found that deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest led to an approximately 75% reduction in rainfall in the region.
Growing data shows that deforestation affects rainfall and other growing conditions, which were previously difficult to quantify without advanced mapping and analysis tools.
The new research comes as Brazil and other coffee-producing countries face off with the European Union over a law that would force them to provide information on whether coffee sold in the bloc was grown on recently deforested land.
O Brazil is the world’s largest coffee producerwith a unique environment for cultivation. But conditions in the southeast’s main producing regions that helped coffee thrive — such as reliable, timely rainfall and fertile soil — have been degraded by deforestation, the report says, and forest cutting continues.
According to Coffee Watch, the 2014 drought in Brazil was a turning point, when the lack of rain became practically annual. Since then, when it rains, the timing often does not coincide with the needs of the demanding coffee plantations. Simultaneously, as these moisture deficits continue, the soil dries out, further stunting growth, the report concludes.
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Last year, an intense drought in Brazil contributed to shortages and wild spikes in global coffee prices, foreshadowing trouble ahead. While the Brazilian government has made progress in reducing deforestation in some areas in recent years, a much more severe price crisis could be brewing if annual rainfall cycles collapse. By 2050, extreme prices could become the norm as much of Brazil’s coffee belt becomes less productive, Coffee Watch predicts.
Still, deforestation for agricultural expansion is not exclusive to Brazil, and coffee cultivation is not the most problematic agricultural activity. Cattle ranching and soybean cultivation are responsible for much of the deforestation in Brazil and elsewhere.
Forests absorb carbon and help regulate the global climate, but high demand for important commodities such as coffee has driven deforestation worldwide. In 2023, the European Union adopted a law that will force agents in the livestock, timber, cocoa, soy, palm oil, coffee and rubber industries to prove that their products do not come from recently deforested land.
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To maintain access to the European market, which consumes more coffee than any country or bloc in the world, farmers in major producing and exporting countries like Vietnam and Ethiopia are preparing to provide geolocation data on the origin of their crops.
Brazil opposed the legislation. Last year, he pushed for delays, writing to the European Commission — the executive arm of the European Union — that the law is “a unilateral and punitive instrument that disregards national laws,” conflicts with principles of sovereignty, discriminates against countries with forest resources and raises production and export costs.
Instead, he proposed changing the economics behind deforestation and creating a fund to pay developing countries a fee for protecting forests. Next month, Brazil will host the annual United Nations climate conference in the Amazon and will try to advance its environmental vision amid shifting political winds and growing evidence that continuing business as usual is not a long-term option.
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Last month, the European Commission called for a delay in the implementation of the deforestation law, claiming that the system is not technically ready.
But on Tuesday, the commission announced reduced requirements rather than a full delay, with rules starting at staggered times for large and small businesses. The proposal, the commission noted, still needs approval from the European Parliament.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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