Elevated risks and forced migration: The impacts of climate change on coffee farmers

Not long ago, coffee farmers could rely upon a well-established seasonal calendar for planting, harvesting and processing coffee. The occasional outlier weather event was followed by a return to the normal cycle during the subsequent season. Today, in the wake of COP26, climate change continues to disrupt this calendar and is contributing to the unpredictability and increasing intensity of weather events, including powerful hurricanes like Eta and Iota which devastated parts of Central America in 2020 and prolonged droughts in the region’s dry corridor.

An increase in humidity and air temperature of just a couple of degrees has also created ideal conditions for a fungus known as la roya to thrive for nine years. This fungus attaches itself to the underside of coffee leaves, eventually defoliating the coffee plant and drastically reducing its production and the farming families’ earnings from coffee, which is often their only source of income. La roya appeared in Central America in 2012. By 2014, it had spread throughout the region, causing crop losses in excess of $1 billion while leaving hundreds of thousands unemployed.[1]

When the harsh impacts of climate change are combined with the volatility of the international coffee market, farmers are unable to meet the basic needs of their families. A well-known phenomenon in Central America known as “los meses flacos” (or “the thin months” of chronic seasonal food scarcity) has plagued small-scale coffee farmer for decades. The impact of these months has been exacerbated by climate change and farmers’ overdependence on earnings from coffee.

When farmers’ earnings do not meet their families’ basic needs, families look to reduce their expenses. Scarcity manifests itself in a lack of access to education, to medical care, to credit and even to nutritious food on the table throughout the year. Indeed, many families who have recently attempted to migrate to the U.S. have not been doing so only for better opportunities. For many, food scarcity was the primary driver.[2]

Globally, the average age of coffee farmers is approaching 60 years old. At the same time, the past decade has revealed a steady exodus of young people leaving their coffee-farming families and communities in Central America to seek greater economic opportunities in nearby urban centers or in the United States. Many young people do not want to build their futures on coffee when the returns have been so elusive for their parents. The pathway to emerge from poverty on the farm has become steeper every year. With young people leaving the farm in the hands of their aging parents, it is natural to ask, “Who is going to harvest the next generation of specialty coffee?”

In order to build hope for the next generation and support young people throughout Central America to thrive within their own country, Corus organization Lutheran World Relief has developed an approach to youth engagement which follows USAID’s Positive Youth Development Framework and strives to prepare young people living in rural poverty for sustainable careers in agriculture.