Environmental Impact of Coffee Production

The liquid that fuels millions around the globe. Coffee providing caffeine and warmth to early-morning risers and late-night workers alike. There’s little doubt that coffee is an essential commodity, but all this consumption means it also holds with its environmental consequences. So today, we are going to investigate the true cost of coffee by asking two questions: What’s the impact of growing coffee on the environment? And why do we grow it this way we do? Five hundred billion cups of coffee are consumed worldwide every year. And in the United States, where the coffee flows like water, drinkers consume roughly 400 million cups a day.

The demand for coffee is undeniable. It’s the second most traded product next to crude oil. But there’s something hidden in these large numbers: an absolute split between the geography of coffee consumers and coffee producers. The countries that import the most coffee, like Germany, United States and France, are primarily situated in Europe and North America, while the biggest producers are situated in the Global South, with countries like Vietnam, Brazil and Colombia exporting the bulk of the world’s coffee. Essentially coffee plantations have spread out across the majority world to stuff the coffee addiction of the Global. So, when considering the environmental impact caused by coffee, it’s not just the visible waste of unnecessary cups that we need to address, it's also the impact that covers how coffee is grown. So, in a very simple way, there are two ways of cultivating coffee: sun-grown and shade-grown. Sun-grown coffee is just a simple way to describe the relatively new industrial coffee farming systems. These production methods were getting started in the 1970s and 80s which hunted to industrialize supply chains to increase yields and turn down prices. But as many of the coffee-growing countries like Brazil and Colombia change over to this new industrial way of farming, which depends on chemical resistant and sun-tolerant coffee strains like Robusta coffee, they began to experience the ecological concerns of this globalized system. Sun grown coffee depends on large feeds of closely planted crops of coffee that are grown without the protection of shade trees, drench in chemical herbicides and pesticides, and then harvested in one fell dive using expensive technology, which is not unlike the monocropping approach applied to corn and soybeans in the US. As a result of technification, smallholder farmers in some cases are forced out of coffee production altogether, because they are unable to keep up with the crushing combination of high input costs of big machinery and the low prices caused by competition with larger mono-crop farms across the world. This industrialized coffee system can lead to numerous environmental problems like mountainside erosion, soil degradation, chemical pollution in waterways, as well as deforestation. Sun-grown coffee is one of the most sprinkle crops in the world. This not only causes ecological damage in the form of runoff and species loss, but it also harms the health of workers at farms where the chemicals are computed over safety equipment. Essentially, sun-grown coffee farmers are stuck in an order that demands high yields and low prices at the expense of the community and the environment around them. But there is another method of growing coffee. In fact, it is how coffee has always been grown up until recently. Under the protective shade of other trees. Shade-grown cultivation is the traditional system of growing coffee. This system prioritizes a biodiverse landscape to build a healthier habitat for coffee plants. Indeed, coffee plants prefer shade when they grow in the natural environment. This type of growing system allows for a much more diverse, and ultimately stable, method of growing coffee. By allowing the coffee plant to bloom in its ideal habitat, it requires fewer chemicals and the trees that are intercropped with coffee not only provide shade but have the potential to carbon sequestration from the atmosphere. If more farmers adopt tree intercropping systems like those used on coffee plantations, they could potentially sequester 17.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide over the next 30 years. This carbon sequestration happens because intercropped trees on a coffee farm in many ways look like forests. As a result, this means they have the added benefit of attracting countless pest-loving birds that act as a natural insecticide for the coffee. And unlike sun-grow monocultures, clearing forest land for shade-grown coffee production is unnecessary. Alongside all of these environmental benefits, intercropping with nut or fruit trees means a more diverse and ultimately a more stable livelihood. This means that if a coffee crop fails one year, it won’t necessarily spell collapse. So, yes while overall yields might be a bit lower than an industrial system, shade-grown coffee means more economic security, less mechanization, and a healthier ecosystem. On the top of the list, the coffee just generally tastes much better. Ultimately, the industrialized system, while good for higher yield has pushed coffee-growing into an environmentally destructive activity. Shade-grown coffee clearly demonstrates that coffee doesn’t have to damage the soil or its environment, in fact, traditional coffee growing has been around for hundreds of years. The important thing here is to observe where and how this transition to an environmentally destructive practice is happening. So, let’s be simple and clear, this didn’t just happen naturally. When we looked toward the environmental impacts of coffee then, the answer is not as simple as just buying single-origin, shade-grown varieties. This is an important part of the solution, but we must simultaneously understand that for more ecologically sound systems to prosper, they need a global economy that actively seeks to support and fund them. One that prioritizes environmental health, communal well-being, and quality goods and stands in simple contrast to the current global capitalist system which seeks high production, low prices, and growth regardless of social and environmental cost.