CIAT’s work to document the threat of climate change to coffee producers in Latin Amercia is starting to the get wide coverage it deserves. Coffee is crucial to smallholder farmers in the tropics – but the crop has very limited climatic range. Rising temperatures and unpredictable rains are already beginning to wreak havoc on production of one of the world’s most valuable agricultural exports.
This Sci-Dev article by Peter Baker calls for decision makers to be guided by science in order to make adaptation strategies both relevant and effective. CIAT’s work can help. We are continuing to develop ways to quantify the impact of climate change on coffee farmers and supply chains through a number of Private-Public Partnerships (PPP) across Latin America.
For more on the threats to coffee production in Latin America, the work underway to help farmers adapt, and wider issues of climate change and what it means for agriculture, see the following links:
- From the CIAT blog – Laure Collet on the future of high-quality coffee
- Andy Jarvis’ presentation on coffee and climate change in Colombia (in Spanish).
- The Climate change RFP initiative
- The issue of smallholder adaptation
For more on the threats of climate change to agriculture around the world, have a look at the CGIAR climate change blog, Rural Climate Exchange.
