Tag Archives: CUP

Knocking on Coffee’s Door: Cocoa’s Case as a Coffee Farm Alternative

2016-04-22 Hugh Aprile Comments Off

In previous Coffeelands posts we have written about the importance of diversifying smallholder coffee farms as a hedge against falling coffee prices, low coffee productivity resulting from disease (such as coffee leaf rust) and other factors. Diversification into other crops such as nuts, plantains and fruit, among others, also helps to ensure that a farmer […]

Some Ethiopian Farmers’ success comes at a steep price for wild coffee (& the future of the sector)

2015-05-11 Kraig Kraft Comments Off

A reaction to: Protecting coffee from intensification – Science Magazine, January 8, 2015. In the highlands of Ethiopia, farmers’ successes are putting in peril one of the most important resources to the global coffee industry in the face of a changing climate: the wild coffee forests. Arabica coffee, as you all know, has its origins […]

356. Coffee rust: An inconvenient truth

2013-05-06 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

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, […]

57. Coffee and food security event opens in Nicaragua

2010-06-09 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

In a few minutes I will leave the swelter of Managua and drive to the cool shade of the coffeelands overlooking Matagalpa for a four-day workshop where dozens of smallholder coffee farmers from across Mexico and Central America will gather to talk about something other than coffee: how to reduce hunger in the coffeelands.

55. Climate change and coffee in the news

2010-06-07 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

Reuters recently published an article that warns about the likely impacts of climate change on coffee farming here and explains what our partners at CIAT are trying to do about it.

40. Climate change: Coffee Under Pressure

2010-04-29 Coffeelands Staff Comments Off

We have partnering with CIAT (the International Center for Tropical Agriculture) to implement a climate change adaptation project with funding from Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Coffee Under Pressure: Climate Change and Adaptation in Mesoamerica (or CUP for short) is helping farmers assess their own vulnerability to climate change and adapt to changing conditions on the ground. We also hope this modest project can show a way forward in the ongoing search for cost-effective, scalable ways to bring actionable climate change research to smallholder farmers.