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If you were to ask coffee farmers in Guatemala about the biggest challenges they face in the sustainability of their agribusinesses, what responses would you expect?

LISA ANTOSHAK and EVIE SMITH share the results of an interdisciplinary research project conducted during the summer of 2019 that sought to learn more about the biggest challenges facing coffee producers today.

One common challenge you might expect to hear about is coffee leaf rust, which impacted upwards of 70 percent of coffee farms in Guatemala from 2011 to 2013.[1] Or maybe you’d expect to hear about the coffee price crisis, which was marked by the C price of coffee dropping below US$1.00 per pound in August 2018 and staying there for much of 2019.[2] The reality is, however, far more complex.

As a part of a team of researchers from the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) Coffee Center, we developed an interdisciplinary, cross-sector collaboration to learn more about the biggest challenges in Guatemalan coffee production, soliciting insights directly from farmers. While most academic research begins with a hypothesis to be tested, our approach used a series of open- ended questions, designed to identify needs and issues felt in the sector by producers and across the value stream. Participatory and collaborative research like this opens the opportunity to expand the scope of research, break down assumptions, and develop lines of inquiry that might not be at the heart of academic or sector priorities.

While the themes of coffee leaf rust and the price crisis did emerge in interview responses, they were often mentioned in relation to other topics that we had not anticipated: climate change and labor migration. Time and time again, we heard that the coffee industry in Guatemala is struggling because of changing rainfall patterns due to climate change and constraints due to labor migration. Not only did farmers recognize the interrelatedness of these issues, they identified a variety of different solutions that they were already exploring or would like to experiment with to address the limitations that these challenges present. Here, we’ll unpack why climate change and labor migration are so harmful to coffee production, why together they represent such a large threat to the stability of the coffee industry, and why it is important that other value chain actors work closely with coffee farmers to develop holistic and appropriate solutions to the problems presented.

Digging into the Data

Our interdisciplinary research team drew on perspectives and tools from plant sciences, sociology, and economics, working to integrate these distinct disciplines in a unified research approach. The result was the development of a survey tool used for semi-structured interviews to collect data on topics including the history and farm background, annual management practices, decision-making, technical assistance, innovation and experimentation, processing, marketing, and the sale of coffee. While we conducted interviews with 34 farmers, not all farmers reported or had the same information regarding their production available. Figure 1 outlines a summary of what was shared in these interviews.

Figure 1: Summary of farm data reported by interviewees[3][4][5]

The data in figure 1 highlights the diversity of circumstances that researchers and industry must consider in developing responses to issues of price, labor, and climate change.

The data analysis process used was largely drawn from sociology,[6] but incorporated and preserved the perspective from each researcher’s discipline, allowing the specialization of each to bear on the interpretation of the data.[7] In order to study the qualitative responses, we created descriptive codes[8] to capture agronomic and market information for analysis. We used several different methodologies to interpret and understand the data, including how many times certain words were used across all the interviews, longer descriptive summaries of the interviews we conducted, and visual representations of the interview data. A full report of the methodologies used, findings, and recommendations are available from the authors, upon request.

Research Results

Figure 2: Results from the data analysis show the top nine agronomic and sector challenges, ranked by the number of mentions by interviewees

After identifying major themes based on the number of mentions received, we reviewed interviewee responses to identify more specific trends within each major challenge. The results from the analysis identified nine major agronomic and non-agronomic challenges. Figure 2 illustrates a comparison of the most-mentioned challenges described by the interviewees.[9] Pests and diseases were the most-mentioned challenge, followed by climate change, price, and labor. Given that the themes discussed by farmers about pests, diseases, and price were expected and are fairly well understood, we focus our discussion here on the two other primary challenges and where they intersect with others.

What’s Rain Got to Do With It?

Changes in the timing, intensity, and quantity of rain on coffee farms were identified as a major challenge by the farmers and other sector stakeholders. Some changes in rainfall described by farmers included seeing less steady rainfall and fewer, but more intense, rainstorms. Additionally, the timing of rainfall was less predictable. These changing rainfall patterns introduce new agronomic management challenges for coffee farmers in terms of pest and disease control, fertilizer management, and harvest timing. As a result, farmers are seeing increased severity and incidence of pests and diseases on their farms because these changes create conditions that extend the amount of time and area of land where pests and diseases can be harbored. Major coffee pests and diseases include coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix) and coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei), both of which decrease coffee yields and quality. Changes in rainfall also introduce new problems for farmers in terms of fertilizer application, which is most beneficial to coffee trees when the ground is wet. As most smallholder coffee producers rely on rainfall rather than irrigation systems to provide water to their coffee farms, fertilizer has to be applied in conjunction with rain in order for the plants to be able to take up nutrients. Reductions in rainfall, decreased predictability of rainfall, and increases in intensity of rainfall all make planning fertilizer applications to maximize coffee quality and yield challenging. Finally, rain strongly influences the timing of coffee harvest both by dictating when the plants flower and the fruits develop,[10] how many times each plant must be harvested, and when cherries can be harvested and dried. These shifts mean that coffee farmers’ historical farm management calendars are no longer useful in managing their farms. Coffee farmers are having to learn to adapt quickly to manage pest, fertilization, harvest, and other farming challenges brought on by these new and changing rainfall patterns that are shifting as a result of climate change.

Less Labor, More Uncertainty

Labor migration and shortages were also a consistent concern across interviews. In the face of higher wages for coffee labor within different regions of Guatemala and in neighboring countries such as Honduras, there were reports of labor shortages by farmers and farm operators. Interviewees noted continued migration to the United States, driven in part by the low price of coffee. Many farmers and cooperatives described the constraints they faced in being able to afford and identify laborers for farm maintenance, labor, and processing. An additional challenge for farm owners and operators was their investment in training laborers who might migrate or not be available in the future, while others were concerned about their ability to retain this skilled and trained labor season to season. The impacts of labor shortages and migration are profound and nuanced for specialty coffee and sustainable coffee production. In the face of the price crisis, labor was often one of the early farm expenditures cut or reduced by farm owners and operators. The tension between these cuts and the interest in entering the specialty coffee market was often palpable in discussions. The agronomic management tasks required for high-quality, specialty coffee require substantial and skilled labor, which is increasingly difficult for producers to find or afford. One technical assistance provider interviewed pointed to one hidden impact of labor shortages: Farm owners and managers he has been working with are increasing herbicide use due to the decreased amount of labor available for weeding. Attention to labor shortages and labor migrations is essential to ensuring a sustainable specialty coffee market.

The Perfect Storm

Changing rainfall patterns due to climate change combined with migration of farm laborers act synergistically to create the perfect storm for smallholder coffee producers: it limits their ability to adapt to constrained and changing coffee production conditions as well as compromises their ability to meet specialty coffee demands. In the case of Guatemala and other coffee producing countries where the sector is mostly made up of smallholders, these factors are compounded by low coffee prices, creating a cycle of low coffee quality and yields. Climate change, labor shortages, and low prices are responsible for the farm-level constraints felt directly by coffee farmers and experienced all the way along the value chain (figure 3).

How Can We Help?

Given the interconnected and interdisciplinary nature of the challenges facing smallholder coffee farmers, the solutions developed to address these issues must reach across disciplines and sectors, and we all have a part to play in this regard. Large industry businesses and donors can contribute solutions by prioritizing and funding research that addresses producer constraints whenever possible. Small- and medium-scale coffee roasters and buyers working with producers can contribute by committing to communicate with their farmer suppliers to determine the problems that they are feeling most acutely; they can also actively engage in supporting the development of adaptation strategies. In research, we must step out of our disciplinary silos to develop integrative solutions that target these issues in a more holistic manner. And coffee consumers, who often do not know the value of their purchasing power, can contribute to developing solutions by choosing to buy their coffee from roasters and cafés that they know are responsibly addressing issues faced by coffee producers. The issues of climate change and labor migration in coffee are daunting for producers—and our entire sector—but by making intentional, farmer- centered decisions, the coffee industry can collectively move towards greater sustainability.

LISA ANTOSHAK and EVELYN SMITH are master’s students at the University of California, Davis.

References

[1] Prensa Libre. (2013, February, 8). Guatemala declara emergencia por roya y aporta 12.5 millones para combatirla. Prensa Libre. Retrieved from https://www.prensalibre.com/ economia/guatemala-decreta-emergencia- plaga-cafe_0_862114006-html/

[2] Hudson, E. (2019, September 7). The six stages of the coffee price crisis.

SCA News. https://scanews.coffee/2019/09/17/ the-six-stages-of-the-coffee-price-crisis/

[3] Only 7 of 34 farms provided sufficient information about coffee harvest and/or farm size to generate this estimate.

[4] This report uses International Coffee Organization conversion measurements to convert reported yields of fruit and parchment into green coffee. Manzana is the primary unit of area measurement used by coffee producers in Guatemala and is used for yield estimates in this report and is estimated to be equal to

0.7 hectares.

[5] Zero is defined as no formal employees, where farms are operated only by family labor.

[6] Weiss, R.S. (1994). Learning from Strangers: The Arts and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies. Free Press

[7] Belotto, M. J. (2018). Data analysis methods for qualitative research: managing the challenges of coding, interrater reliability, and thematic analysis. The Qualitative Report, 23(11), 2622–2633. Retrieved from https://nsuworks. nova.edu/tqr/vol23/iss11/2

[8] Saldaña, J. (2013). The coding manual for the qualitative researcher. 2nd Edition. Sage Publishing

[9] It is important to note that while our analysis looks at the number of mentions of specific topics, it does not comment on the severity of the individual challenges in relation to each other.

[10] DaMatta, F., Ronchi, C., Maestri, M., and Barros, R. (2007). Ecophysiology of coffee growth and production. Brazilian Journal of Plant Physiology, 19(4), 485–510.

We hope you are as excited as we are about our return with the release of 25, Issue 13. A return to print and the availability of these features across sca.coffee/news wouldn’t have been possible without our generous underwriting sponsors for this issue: Bellwether Coffee, DaVinci Gourmet, and Pacific Foods. Thank you so much for your support! Learn more about our underwriters here.

Trouble Brewing: Climate Change, Labor Migration, and Implications for the Sustainability of the Coffee Industry | 25, Issue 13