Poor Stewardship of the Amazon Rainforest = Dwindling Coffee Crops

"The ecologically destructive way we grow coffee is going to result in us not having coffee."

"Deforestation for coffee cultivation is killing the rains, which is killing the coffee."

Etelle Higonnet, with nonprofit industry watchdog Coffee Watch 

 

"We had some recovery from the frost, but in the last two years we have had a very irregular climate, with dry periods during the rainy season and more rain than usual during the dry season." 

"This irregular weather affects coffee flowering and the growth of coffee beans, having a negative impact on crop volume."

"It’s not as bad as the frost we had in 2021, but it has resulted in lower than expected production."

Marcelo Vieira, Head, Coffee Department, Brazilian Rural Society agriculture group  

The impact of the extreme weather on the Cerrado region in August 2024. Image: Antonio Sergio

 

 According to the latest report from industry watchdog Coffee Watch published last month, the destruction of forests leads to an interruption of the natural weather cycle of rain, leaving long-term prospects of coffee bean harvests in a severely compromised position. The group mapped Brazil's deforestation in its southeastern coffee belt, linking it to changes in rainfall and resulting crop failures. Local forests, destroyed for the land to be given over to plantations, has seen rainfall in those areas decreased, driving lower yields and ultimately crop failures resulting in higher coffee prices for consumers.

 

Should the situation go on, Etelle Higonnet with Coffee Watch, warns that fewer crops will materialize while more forests are destroyed to answer to producers' calls for expanding farmland for coffee crops. Clearing forests to meet the demand for coffee production, according to the report, will exacerbate normal rainfall patterns creating shrinking yields for farmers, since coffee crops are not drought-resilient.

 

The report relied on Brazilian scientists' findings, and saw publication in September in Nature Communications. Deforestation in Brazil's Amazon Rainforest was found responsible for roughly 75 percent of rainfall decreases in the Amazon catchbasin.  According to the data, deforestation affects rainfall and other related growing conditions. Advanced mapping techniques and analytical tools are now used to identify and quantify these deleterious connections. 

 

Lack of rain in Brazil is causing significant stress to coffee trees. Image: Jonas Ferraresso

 

 A European Union law meant to force Brazil and other coffee-producing countries like Vietnam to provide information whether coffee sold in the bloc had been grown on recently deforested land now validates concerns much to the consternation of Brazil and others. As the world's most productive coffee grower, Brazil's concern is focused on cultivation. Once, Brazil's main southeastern growing regions' conditions saw coffee thrive with reliable rains and fertile soil -- now degraded as a result of deforestation.

 

Yet, despite the report's definitive results, forest felling in Brazil is ongoing. A 2014 drought in Brazil was a turning point, when rain shortage spurred the reality of an annual repeat. Condition-sensitive coffee crops have not responded well since then, with rain falling haphazardly, its timing misaligned with growing requirements. Intense drought in 2024 contributed to wild spikes in global coffee prices, reflecting shortages.

 

Recent strides by Brazilian authorities to reduce the pace of deforestation in some areas will fail to have an impact with more severe pricing crises that may yet result should annual rain cycles collapse. Much of Brazil's coffee belt will become less reliable and the projection by Coffee Watch is that by 2050 prices could begin to soar. 

 

It is not only coffee growing's future that will be impacted by environmental changes led by deforestation. Cattle ranching and  soy farming expansion are also related to forest felling in Brazil. High demand for major commodities drive deforestation worldwide. Yet in a world concerned with climate change and a pending environmental catastrophe, the role of forests in tempering these changes is vital since forests absorb carbon and aid in the regulation of global climate. 

 

 

 

Drought-damaged coffee trees in Brazil in October 2024. Image: Maria Laura Simoni

 

 

 

Instant Kenyan Video Sensation

"It is said charity begins at home. And for these young orphaned elephants, this charitable foundation is what they call home." 

"I'd kept my distance, but I was so focused and didn't even realize they were getting close."

"At first I felt the elephant trunk’s contact on my back but decided to keep going because I was doing my almost 10th take of my piece to camera."

"I wasn’t gonna let anything stop me. Until the baby elephant stuck its trunk in my mouth."

Alvin KIaunda, reporter for the Kenya Broadcasting Corp.

Elephant interrupts reporter in Kenya  Still from video

 It was an assignment. A little out of the ordinary, perhaps, but this man is a professional, and he decided he would take his story, backgrounding it at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, a non-profit operating an elephant orphanage in Nairobi. The foundation of the story was to emphasize the critical condition of Kenya's wildlife as the country battles its worst drought in decades.

According to local authorities, the extreme weather is ending up causing the death of twenty times as many elephants as poaching has. The country's Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife revealed in a recently released report that over a thousand animals have perished as a result of the drought. Animals whose lives have ended directly resulting from drought conditions include wildebeests, zebras, elephants and buffaloes, among others. 

When Reporter Kaunda  was tasked with tackling the item for his employer, the Kenya Broadcasting Corp., he thought that doing so from the location of the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi, would add an extra touch of drama and engage his audience with the presence of orphaned elephants. He was experiencing initial difficulties in his delivery, however, and had already attempted ten full takes, none of which spoke to the issue in the way he had planned.

 

At the beginning of the clip the reporter was able to keep a straight face and remained very professional as he spoke about the young orphaned elephants

 

 Finally, as the elephants drew closer to where he had stationed himself on the reserve, in the midst of detailing the effects of human action on the natural world, he felt the tip of an elephant trunk behind his left ear. One of the  young elephants was clearly curious and had taken the opportunity of proximity to explore the visitor with its sensitive trunk. Which it draped over the journalist's shoulder, then twisting higher, investigated his ear, so unlike her own.

As  four-year-old Kindani's trunk gently ran over the side of his head, the seasoned reporter held fast to his journalistic unflappability and continued to recite the delivery of his message to viewers. When the elephant's trunk began snuffling along his face, he could no longer remain unreactive and burst into laughter. Resulting video clips took no time appearing on line on the weekend, resulting in millions of views

"Most of us would have lost our professionalism far sooner."

"An important piece pertaining to the drought, but our orphans just saw a visitor to investigate!"

Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, Nairobi, Kenya

Not long into his report the wild animal started running its truck over Alvin's ear and head

 

 

 

 

All Eyes On The Weather

"It had been playing on my mind that we are not having a harvest. With no rain predicted, you have to make a decision."
"As of Monday, my wife and I have accepted that we are not having a harvest. That is hard. It is heart-breaking."
"Until then you are looking to hope. Every time they predict rain, it doesn't come. It just sucks the energy out of you. You start getting your head around getting more debt. My wife still struggles with the notion that you can do everything right and it all comes down to the weather."
"We have always been able to harvest a crop before and then you have good years that help you through the bad."
"Our turn will come on too. I hope we are still in the game to take advantage of it."
James Hamilton, sixth generation farmer, southeast Australia

"I think the long-term future of drought assistance can't be divorced from the judgement that ultimately has got to be made about the sustainability of agriculture in certain parts of the country in the face of climate change."
"Just throwing cash at farmers [government relief packages]  in what seem to be increasingly frequent droughts is ultimately not helping the farmers, as well as being a waste of taxpayers' money."
Saul Eslake, economist, vice-chancellor's fellow, University of Tasmania

"There is a fair wedge of the farming community that is starting to suffer mentally. Financially they may be OK -- they can borrow money if they have to -- but the sense of failure is a big thing for them.
"They think they messed it all up, having to sell all the sheep or the cattle off the farm."
Tim Wiggins, stock agent, Narromine, Australia

Pastoralist Lachlan Gall checks the water tank on his property north of Broken Hill in outback NSW. 100% of the state is impacted by the drought. Photograph: David Mariuz/AAP

Farmer Hamilton felt that he had no choice but to bite the bullet At age 47, a man whose family had been farming the land close by the inland town of Narromine, west of Sydney, where his farmland inheritance lies, whose family has locally been farming the land for 150 years, it was impossible at this juncture viewing the barrenness of his land, that he could continue that tradition. That conditions of weather; lack of rain leading to serious drought, ensures that the tradition of farming is no longer feasible.

Although he still holds out hope for the future, that something may change and the weather turn around to reflect what it once was, enabling his fields and those of other farmers to once again yield the crops they had depended upon for their living, for the time being that does not reflect reality. Reality is that his farm fields are now devoid of crops, the wheat crops usually covering the fields are but tiny shoots scarcely rising above the hard-packed soil. In his sheep paddock the pond is at ten percent capacity.

The hard choice was made that the 475 sheep will have to go; the Hamiltons can no longer afford their feed. Anything green that did manage to creep above the soil has been browsed by the arrival of hordes of kangaroos, desperate to find feed, moving in from the west, where conditions are even worse. The drought of 18 months' duration and counting recalls an earlier drought of 1902. New South Wales declared the entire state in drought last week. Residents are restricted to three-minute showers, and two weekly wash loads in some areas.

Australia as a whole has seen a drop of 20 percent of its former total of 123,000 farms, since 2006. The average age of Australian farmers is now 56. Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had promised relief valued at $12,000 to each struggling farmer. "It is designed to keep body and soul together, not designed to pay for fodder", he explained of the proposed payments. "I think there's just no understanding of what people need and how dire it is", responded Edwina Robertson, campaigning for support for drought-affected farmers, declaring the package "very disappointing".

Photo: Storm clouds are gathering at a property at Silvervale, west of Ipswich, in south-east Queensland. (Supplied: Sarah Woodforth )

Nature, however, had a little bit of a relief gift for parts of New South Wales on Saturday and Sunday, where copious amounts of rain fell in some areas, causing hope and exultation in area farmers. Two days of rain, it is generally acknowledged, is no compensation for a year and a half without rain. The drought conditions will not be lifted simply because a rainy weekend occurred. But hope springs eternal, and many farmers visualize the possibility, however remote, of a new pattern possibly emerging....

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Raising The Alarm

"The situation is quite critical."
"The water table is dropping all over the world. There's not an infinite supply of water."
"We need to get our heads together on how we manage groundwater, because we're running out of it."
Jay Famiglietti, senior water scientist, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

U.S., on Wednesday, June 3, 2015. The Southern Nevada Water Authority is building a three-mile (five-kilometer), $817 million tunnel under Lake Mead to retain access to its Colorado River supply as the reservoir declines to 40 percent of capacity. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg   Cracked ground along the shore of Lake Mead is seen in Boulder City, Nevada, another symptom of drought research shows is becoming a global problem.

There are some areas of the world in truly critical need of water. The situation in North America is nowhere near as desperate as some areas of the world, say for example, the North Caucasus Basin, the Arabian Aquifer System, the Ganges-Brahmaputra Basin. But in the country where the report from NASA emanates, of which Mr. Famiglietti was the senior author, water has always been wasted. In some areas of the country like the south-east there are few natural lakes, and the Army Corps of Engineers operates vast numbers of reservoirs.

In Florida, the Everglades are slowly being drained to irrigate vast sugar and beef plantations; how's that for inappropriate use of natural resources? And how about the new 'independence' in oil and gas that has favoured the United States with its growing exploitation of fossil fuel resources deep underground through fracking? Fracking requires an enormous amount of water in the process of breaking up rock formations deep underground to deeply hidden natural resources of fossil fuels.

Then take California, an enormous state with a population that alone matches that of Canada's in its entirety, its neighbour to the north which is blessed with a huge number of freshwater lakes and an abundance of rivers. California is a state that grows a heftily major proportion of the country's fresh fruits and vegetables, much of used domestically, but a large proportion exported abroad as well. Irrigation is required for the growth and export of nuts, fruits and vegetables that make the state so wealthy.

Californians live in a hot, dry atmosphere and so backyard swimming pools are a common commodity among home-owners. Americans are wedded to their smooth green lawns, and grass needs lots of water particularly in that climate, to thrive. The state has stumbled through one year after another of drought, just as drought has visited other areas of the country, mostly prairie states, requiring municipalities and states to pass bylaws restricting water use.

But it isn't only drought-stricken California that has been steadily draining its reservoirs of underground aquifers, the very same thing is occurring world-wide, according to two new studies recently released by American researchers. Who point out that twenty-one of the world's 37 largest aquifers, from India and China to France and the U.S., have gone well beyond sustainability tipping points. Translated, this means that more water is being taken from underground reservoirs than nature can replace.

It takes millennia, thousands of years for aquifers to build up their accumulation. They are gradually recharged with meltwater from seasonally melting snow and from rain events. A global scarcity of fresh water has led to the disastrous draining of underground reservoirs which supply 35 percent of water used by the worldwide community. And during times of drought more emergency drilling for water occurs, compounding the problem.





Take California's example; whereas it normally uses 40% of its groundwater reservoirs, it has been draining 60% for its water use latterly. Matters have spiralled to such a level of water scarcity that for the first time in its history water availability has been reduced for agricultural irrigation purposes. Flat, arable land that is warm and sunny is great for growing fruits and vegetables, but the required water component comprises a complication in the equation.

Unprecedentedly precise measures of groundwater reservoirs deep within the Earth were taken with the use of NASA's GRACE satellites to show subtle alterations in the gravitational influence of the earth's surface. The satellites flying overhead showed slight changes in aquifer water levels charged over the past ten years, from 2003 to 2013. The Canning Basin of Australia held the third-highest depletion rate in the world.

While to the east of it the Great Artesian Basin was found among the healthiest, attributable, it was found likely, to heavy mining near the Canning Basin; a water-intensive activity. California's Central Valley Aquifer is struggling, being drained for the irrigation of farm fields. A new state law was passed a year ago allowing for local control over groundwater, a law whose effects may take decades to discern.

In North Korea, said to be suffering its worst drought in a century, extensive damage to the production of rice and potatoes has been noted. Drought has caused about 30 percent of rice paddies to dry up. Threatening the hermit kingdom with another flirtation with famine, necessitating humanitarian aid to flow through to the country whose tyrant threatens military destabilization in the region and beyond.

Armed with the latest monsoon rainfall data, weather experts finally conceded this month that India is facing a drought, confirming what millions of livestock farmers around the country had known for weeks. Above, a child rides on a donkey as they migrate due to lack of water at Sami town in the western Indian state of Gujarat.  Source: Al Jazeera