Proportion of shade-grown coffee shrinks, study finds

The proportion of land used to cultivate shade-grown coffee has fallen by a fifth according to a new study.

Traditional shade-grown coffee is farmed underneath a canopy of trees which provide a blanket of dense to moderate shade, protecting the coffee plants from harsh sunlight. The process also helps maintain biodiversity as a rich area for plant and animal life remain and as such plantations often become a hub for migrating birds whilst supporting crucial ecosystems which contain vital pollinators for coffee such as birds, bees and bats.

Shade-grown plantations are supported by the Rainforest Alliance who say that they are “the next best thing to [a] rainforest” in terms of bioversity. Yet this method of coffee growing is declining.

Compromising of researchers from six academic institutions, the study found that the area of land, relative to the total area used to grow coffee, had dropped nearly 20% over the course of the past eighteen years.

Authors of the study state that a shift towards a more intensive method of farming is to blame, and is likely to have negative effect on the environment in the long-term.

“The paradox is that there is greater public interest than ever in environmentally friendly coffee,” says Shalene Jha, an assistant professor from The University of Texas, one of the six academic institutes that collaborated to create this piece of research.

“Where coffee production is expanding…it tends to be intensive.”

The study found that since 1990, the land used to grow coffee in Africa has contracted whilst it has substantially grown in Asia, with Vietnam and Indonesia seeing the biggest expansion of coffee plantations in that time period. Most of the techniques employed on these new farms, the study reports, are intensive.

Jha says that the trend is predominantly driven by farmers seeking short-term benefits after seeing global coffee prices drop. In order to remain profitable, the belief is farmers have moved seeking lower land, labour costs and have grown robusta, which can tolerate exposure to full sunlight more readily than the arabica variety.

“Intensive coffee production is not sustainable” said Jha. “You exhaust the soil and after a couple of decades, it can no longer grow coffee. On the other hand, the oldest coffee farms in the world have thrived for centuries because the forest replenishes the soil for them.”

The team of academics stated that because of high up-front costs, government agencies, conservation groups and various aid entities should work together in order to promote more coffee farmers back into shade-grown production.