Protecting the future of coffee with World Coffee Research
The future of our brews, and the livelihoods of those who produce them, face increasing threats from climate change, diseases and low yields. If we want the industry and the people that work in it to prosper, we need to look closely at how tea and coffee is produced and find farming techniques, and plants, that will survive and thrive in years to come.
Based on my field observations in the different regions of the country, coffee farmers are highly constrained with unpredictable prolonged dry seasons and shorter rainy seasons requiring expensive measures such as mulching and irrigation, making coffee farming a capital intensive venture. This is accompanied with perseverance of diseases such as coffee leaf rust that occur in farmer fields mainly in the dry season leading to great losses/reduction in coffee yields.
Maureen Namugalu, WCR Uganda Country Project Manager
A research-based approach
Tea and coffee farmers around the world are already seeing glimpses of what the worst effects of climate change are going to bring. Droughts and flooding, declining yields of quality produce and devastating diseases mean that farmers often struggle to make a decent living from their crop. As events like these increase with global warming, more and more producers will find that growing tea or coffee isn’t a viable source of income.
To address these changes, we urgently need to work with our suppliers on new and innovative approaches to farming. Which is why we’re proud to be championing the work of World Coffee Research (WCR), a collaborative organisation which enables the global coffee industry to invest in agricultural innovation to empower producers.
WCR combine cutting edge research and development with a focus on farmers to try and get the best new agronomy approaches and varieties into farmers’ hands as soon as possible.
Adapting to a changing climate
We support WCR’s portfolio of collaborative research and have provided focused funding to a range of initiatives in our supplier countries. These include farmer field trials in East Africa to test different coffee varieties and farming techniques, and a nursery development program, aimed at building the capacity of nurseries to produce adequate volumes of genetically conforming and healthy seedlings to farmers.
Our latest partnership will see the development and creation of an interactive tool that agronomists can use to help determine which varieties of coffee might best suit different farms and growing regions in future years as our climate changes.
WCR is overlaying information and data gathered from its International Multilocation Variety Trials (which evaluate the world’s highest-performing coffee varieties across a multitude of growing environments and local conditions in countries worldwide) with existing climate research. This will determine how different growing environments impact coffee quality to inform future breeding efforts.
The next phase of the project will use the data collected to create an interactive platform that soil and crop production experts can use to help work out which coffee varieties will perform best in different regions or locations, based on what the climate is predicted to do in that area over future years.
“Coffee agricultural innovation ensures farmers have access to climate-resilient varieties for decades to come. Through shared investment with WCR member companies, Taylors is ensuring that coffee remains a strong business opportunity for farmers around the world.”
Dr. Jennifer “Vern” Long, WCR CEO