‘It Used To Be A Farm – Now It’s A Mall’: How El Salvador’s Crisis-Hit Coffee Producers Are Trying To Adapt – CoffeeTalk

El Salvador’s coffee industry has been severely impacted by war, migration, climate change, falling bean prices, and infestations of rust disease. The Los Chorros Megaproject, El Salvador’s largest-ever infrastructure scheme, has taken chunks out of Ines Ortiz’s coffee farm, but the land lost to the project is only the latest crisis faced by growers in Central America’s smallest country. The industry has survived deforestation, civil war, climate change, falling prices for their beans, and infestations of rust disease in recent decades.

To stem the industry’s decline, a new generation of growers, with more women taking the lead, is trying to pivot towards producing more high-quality coffee. The coffee industry was the engine of El Salvador’s economy last century, responsible for up to 40% of export earnings until the 1990s. However, over the past 20 years, coffee exports fell 65%, according to the new Salvadorian Coffee Institute, the industry body, which is funded by taxes on coffee exports.

The industry plunged deeper into crisis after 2012, when an outbreak of leaf-rust fungus (known as la roya) combined with deforestation and rising average temperatures and humidity devastated plantations. Between 2012 and 2014, annual production fell by 60% to half a million 60kg bags a year – far from the record set in 1974-75, when the country produced 3.8m bags. Karla Boza, a San Salvadorian coffee producer, says that the best way to defend against it is to be healthy, stay nourished, and keep your immune system up.

After the leaf-rust epidemic, customers in countries such as the US bought less Salvadorian coffee, making the industry’s recovery harder. Although production rose slightly in 2022-23, the decline has continued; there were only 37,000 jobs by 2020, reflecting the lack of investment and growing global competition. The devastation wrought by leaf rust, worsened by a warmer climate, has prompted the industry organization World Coffee Research (WCR) to study the Salvadorian crop’s resilience on a small farm near Santa Ana, where it looks for better and safer ways to grow beans. Many producers partly blame the government’s closure of the old coffee institute after the leaf-rust outbreak for the industry’s struggles.

Vern Long, chief executive of WCR, says El Salvador’s industry lacks the national support that enabled Honduras and Guatemala, which have been hit almost as badly by the same factors as El Salvador, to recover. “We have to think differently,” says Long, speaking in Chicago. “The investment gap is severe. And the ability to respond and adapt to the climate crisis is a question of investment and innovation.”

Nearly 20% of coffee farmers also need other work, and labor shortages are seriously affecting coffee productivity. As extreme weather in Central America’s northern triangle propels regional climate migration, about a quarter of all Salvadorians, mostly men, now live abroad, according to the US Agency for International Development.

The lure of jobs in armed services construction and tourism has also depleted the workforce on coffee farms. As employers compete for workers, wages have risen in El Salvador’s dollarized economy, which has been boosted by a recent influx of foreigners after President Bukele’s continuing crackdown on gangs. The resulting feeling of greater security has attracted tourists and more foreign currency. However, even if most coffee producers welcome the reduction in violence, they say the crackdown has inflated labour costs.

The EU’s new deforestation regulation, set to come into force later this year, is posing a significant challenge for Salvadorian coffee producers. The regulation requires farmers exporting coffee to the EU to prove that neither their farm nor their supply chain involves land deforested after 2020, legally or illegally. El Salvador’s coffee industry could be hit harder than any other country in the world, with a predicted loss of more than a third of suitable land by 2050. It claims it is not responsible for the fall of 85% in the country’s forest cover since the 1960s.

The EU regulation has met with frustration from coffee producers in the country, who claim it is a policy made by “people in Brussels” who know nothing about the constraints faced by remote farms. As coffee farms dwindle across El Salvador, what is left of the industry is changing rapidly. As men increasingly emigrate, more farms are being run by women, according to the Women’s Coffee Alliance of El Salvador (AMCES). Maria Pacas, an AMCES board member whose mill processes coffee from Boza’s family farm, says diversification is one solution.

Maria Pacas sees an opportunity in the growth of tourism to broaden her sources of income. In the mountains, where farms once spilled into each other and mist lingers near the Jayaque volcano, birding tourism is now thriving. Maria Pacas, 31, whose coffee won awards over the last decade, recently quit the family farm where she worked alongside her 74-year-old father to open a cafe in the capital’s restaurant-filled San Benito neighborhood.

In San Salvador, opinions differ on the future of coffee in the country. Miguel Araujo, a former environment minister who once farmed 15 hectares in the Bálsamo range, believes the industry still has potential if it focuses on quality over quantity. However, Long, of the WCR, sees the lack of succession from one generation to the next on family farms as part of the problem.

Coffee producers are not blamed for seeking other careers, as they are far behind in the coffee industry and may leave the farm.

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