Watchdog Group Warns Coffee-Driven Deforestation In Brazil Threatens The Future Of Coffee Production – CoffeeTalk

Coffee-driven deforestation is making it harder to grow coffee in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee producer. Between 2001 and 2023, over 1,200 square miles of forest were cleared for coffee cultivation in Brazil’s coffee-growing areas, according to a report from the nonprofit group Coffee Watch. The group used satellite images, government land use data, and a forest-loss alert system in its analysis. Overall, in areas with a high concentration of coffee-growing operations, a total of more than 42,000 square miles of forest are now gone, including forest loss caused directly by coffee farming and indirectly from nearby road and infrastructure projects.

Coffee is not the leading cause of deforestation in Brazil, as cattle ranching is responsible for a far larger share. However, coffee’s role in deforestation has not been talked about enough. Deforestation leads to less rainfall in tropical rainforests, as trees there absorb moisture, which rises to create clouds and more rain. Cutting down trees disrupts the cycle, reducing rainfall and leading to drought. This makes it harder to grow coffee, as it kills the rains, which are exactly what the crop needs to thrive in the long run.

Most years of the past decade have seen rainfall deficits in Brazil’s major coffee-growing areas. Farmers are expanding to respond to the world’s “insatiable demand for coffee,” and to produce that coffee, you need land. Aaron Davis, a senior research leader of crops and global change at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, England, with a longtime focus on coffee, says the report is “timely and useful.” He hopes the report spurs coffee businesses to refuse to buy coffee grown on deforested land.

More environmentally sustainable coffee-growing methods exist, such as using shade trees to shield some plants from the sun and diversifying crops. However, these methods typically don’t yield as much coffee as industrialized production. More needs to be done to reward farmers who are being more sustainable.

The responsibility to encourage more sustainable coffee production extends to consumers, as there needs to be an awareness and a mind shift around the implications of purchasing products like coffee.

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