Amid Climate Change-Driven Droughts, Brazilian Coffee Farms Are Turning To Costly Irrigation – CoffeeTalk

Brazil’s coffee farmers are turning to costly irrigation to meet global demand amid climate change. Drought hit Brazil hard last year, drying up trees and driving global prices to record highs. However, Rodrigo Brondani is expecting a bumper harvest at the Joha farm, which has 900 hectares of irrigated coffee fields, more than 20 times bigger than the average coffee farm in Brazil. Most farms in the western part of Bahia are now irrigated, and Brondani expects to produce up to 80 60-kg bags of coffee per hectare at that specific lot of the farm, double the average yield in Brazil. At current market prices, the farm’s most recent harvest, ended in October, would be worth around $17 million.

Coffee growers have traditionally depended on Brazil’s abundant spring and summer rains, but after last year’s drought, that is changing. Irrigation can be costly, depending on the distance from a water source and the depth of the water table. In some places in Brazil’s traditional coffee growing region in the state of Minas Gerais, the water table has fallen so much that supplying water to irrigated farms has become very difficult. The trees at Joha are planted in nine giant circles that bump up against each other on the vast tropical savanna, facilitating irrigation.

2025 is expected to mark the fourth time in the past six years that global coffee consumption exceeds supply. In the past three years alone, the world has consumed 12.5 million bags, or 750,000 metric tonnes, more coffee than it has grown, equivalent to about 7% of global annual supply. As a result, farmers and coffee roasters have had to run down what coffee they had in storage to meet demand.

The shortfall has driven benchmark coffee prices up nearly 25% already in 2025, after an eye-popping rally of 70% in 2024. The futures price of high quality arabica coffee hit a record of $4.40 per pound on February 13. Arabica coffee prices rose sharply since 2023, and consumers will soon have to pay even more for their morning brews.

Climate change is causing the future of coffee cultivation to be heavily irrigated farms, such as the Joha farm in Brazil. AFB&IOB, one of the world’s largest coffee growers, bought the Joha farm in 2009, but the company now considers water availability as the number one aspect of their decision. Western Bahia sits on one of the world’s largest aquifers, the Urucuia, which is just 20 meters below the surface in some areas. However, in Minas Gerais, the water tables have fallen so far that farmers in some places need to drill wells 300 meters deep to hit water. Drilling that deep is costly and risky, and can result in weak water flow.

Several municipalities in Minas Gerais limited irrigation in 2024 because of the drought. Coffee research body Fundacao Procafe tracks soil moisture at coffee regions in Minas Gerais, and their data showed soils in the top growing region of south Minas had a water deficit for optimum coffee plant growth of 300 millimeters (11.81 inches) at the end of the dry season in October, 2024. This compares to a deficit of 110 millimeters (4.33 inches) in 2023 at the same time and a long-term average of a surplus of 20 mm.

Beyond water availability, a key factor in coffee farming is capital. Farmers around the world are only now reaping the benefits of high coffee prices, after a decade of low values sent many out of business or left them with minimal available cash. A central pivot irrigation system costs around 1.5 million reais ($263,000) each, while a different system called dripping, where small water pipes are inserted in the soil with little holes close to the plants, could cost around 40,000 reais ($6,991) per hectare.

Cooxupe, the world’s largest coffee co-op, operates in the Guaxupe region in Minas Gerais, where the world’s largest coffee co-op, Cooxupe, operates. The co-op has made a partnership with Israeli irrigation company Netafim to provide an option for its associated farmers to install dripping technology and pay with coffee bags over time.

The number of central pivot irrigation systems like the one at Brondani’s farm rose 14% in Brazil from 2022 to 2024, according to the country’s agricultural research company Embrapa. However, recent research raised concerns about the “super exploration” of water resources in Bahia. The amount of water allowed to be used by the booming agricultural sector in Bahia – around 17 billion liters per day – would be enough to supply nine times the population of Sao Paulo, Brazil’s largest city of 11.5 million people.

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