Category: Climate Change

356. Coffee rust: An inconvenient truth

2013-05-06 Comments Off on 356. Coffee rust: An inconvenient truth

The application of climate science to coffee has generated an inconvenient truth: the map of the coffeelands in Mesoamerica will be redrawn over the next 40 years, and by 2050 the specialty coffee map will likely be much smaller than it is today.  Against the backdrop of the current coffee rust epidemic in Central America, […]

355. What they didn’t say at the Coffee Rust Summit

2013-04-29 Comments Off on 355. What they didn’t say at the Coffee Rust Summit

The program at the First International Coffee Rust Summit that recently concluded in Guatemala was filled with experts who addressed many different aspects of the current coffee rust emergency: the epidemiology of coffee rust, origins of this year’s outbreak, methods for controlling it, the social and economic implications for farmers and their communities, strategies for […]

354. Coffee rust: What’s below the surface?

2013-04-24 Comments Off on 354. Coffee rust: What’s below the surface?

During the opening session of last week’s Coffee Rust Summit in Guatemala, the director of Central America’s coffee institute suggested that coffee rust is a symptom of underlying problems in the region’s coffee sector.  More specifically, he noted that the coffeelands in Central America are filled with aging plantations that are poorly managed.  What he […]

352. Overheard at the Coffee Rust Summit

2013-04-19 Comments Off on 352. Overheard at the Coffee Rust Summit

The first day of the First International Coffee Rust Summit is in the books.  My plans to Tweet from the event were foiled by connectivity problems.  Will try again on day two.  Meantime, here are some of the quotes and notes that stood out for me from the first full day of proceedings.

348. Coffee rust: All along the watchtower.

2013-04-11 Comments Off on 348. Coffee rust: All along the watchtower.

There seem to be very few conversations in coffee these days that are not influenced in some way by the coffee rust crisis in Central America. And there are other long-standing conversations that seem to be assuming renewed importance in the current context.  One of these is the return on the investments that farmers make […]

345. Coffee rust: The long haul

2013-04-08 Comments Off on 345. Coffee rust: The long haul

The estimates of productive and economic losses to coffee leaf rust in Central America are nothing short of staggering.  Half of all coffee  affected.  Hundreds of millions of pounds of production losses projected.  Hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.  Economic losses running into the billions of dollars. Against this backdrop, we should not be surprised […]

336. If coffee leaf rust is a perfect storm, is there a silver lining?

2013-02-18 Comments Off on 336. If coffee leaf rust is a perfect storm, is there a silver lining?

A noted coffee breeder at the French research institute CIRAD has suggested that the coffee leaf rust emergency in Central America is the result of a “perfect storm.”  Is there a silver lining anywhere in those storm clouds?

334. The Colombia cultivar question: what we can learn

2013-02-05 Comments Off on 334. The Colombia cultivar question: what we can learn

Over the past two weeks I have written about the coffee leaf rust epidemic that has decimated Colombia’s coffee production, and the response of the country’s coffee authorities, which includes financial incentives for farmers to plant the disease-resistant Castillo cultivar. I have shared the results of a survey we conducted that may bring something novel […]

333. Saving Colombia’s endangered coffee

2013-01-30 Comments Off on 333. Saving Colombia’s endangered coffee

Over the past two weeks, I have been writing about the response of Colombia’s coffee authorities to the current coffee leaf rust epidemic – a massive effort to replace the country’s traditional coffee varieties with the disease-resistant Castillo cultivar.  Today we profile a decidedly more modest effort – our support for farmers who are determined […]