GENDER EQUITY

This research article explores the irrigations issues that constrain sustainable coffee production in Vietnam. The period of coffee cultivation between January and April is a crucial time to the growth of coffee. In that period, rainfall is not sufficient for coffee growth, which translate into manual irrigation. However, according to the authors, the amount of water irrigated by farmers is greater that needed, affecting considerably the cost of production but not increasing the quantity and/or quality of cherries produced. To prove their assumption, they tested the irrigation level per coffee cherries production. Results show that there is good potential to reduce irrigation and increase yields in the case of coffee production in Vietnam. However, it will require additional training to farmers, irrigation supply and access to better management of inputs. For the authors, synchronising the irrigation supply with other inputs management can increase considerably the average yields making the coffee more sustainable and decreasing the cost of production. This article is particularly interesting for professionals looking at water management dynamics for coffee production.

This research article explores the motives for consumers for purchasing organic coffee in South Korea. The authors identify four major motives: health, trust, sensory appeal and environmental protection. The analysis also aims to understand if these motives are responding to social pressure or are personally controllable. Data was collected through a convenience sampling method survey among seven metropolitan cities in South Korea. Results were analysed in relation to age, education level and earnings. The study shows that there is strong potential in South Korea to increase the demand for organic coffee. Young people are interested in spending for organic coffee mostly in connection to the social benefits if linked to a good price strategy. For older people, price is not an affecting factor if the organic coffee is included in capsules and brewing machines they already use. This article is interesting for professionals looking at market analysis information on South Korea and behavioural influence about purchasing organic coffee.

This tool aims to inform policy makers about successful farmer experiences in managing coffee pests without the insecticide endosulfan. It demonstrates that phasing out of Highly Hazardous Pesticides (HHPs) in favour of safe and cost-effective alternatives is entirely possible - on large estates and small family farms. The findings also serve as useful generic lessons for governments, farmers and other stakeholders on how to improve chemicals management and promote sustainable agriculture in the context of the Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm (BRS) conventions.

Coffee has proven to be highly sensitive to climate change. Because coffee plantations have a lifespan of about thirty years, the likely effects of future climates are already a concern. Forward-looking research on adaptation is therefore in high demand across the entire supply chain. In this paper we seek to project current and future climate suitability for coffee production (Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora) on a global scale. We used machine learning algorithms to derive functions of climatic suitability from a database of geo-referenced production locations. Use of several parameter combinations enhances the robustness of our analysis. The resulting multi-model ensemble suggests that higher temperatures may reduce yields of C. arabica, while C. canephora could suffer from increasing variability of intra-seasonal temperatures. Climate change will reduce the global area suitable for coffee by about 50 % across emission scenarios. Impacts are highest at low latitudes and low altitudes. Impacts at higher altitudes and higher latitudes are still negative but less pronounced. The world�s dominant production regions in Brazil and Vietnam may experience substantial reductions in area available for coffee. Some regions in East Africa and Asia may become more suitable, but these are partially in forested areas, which could pose a challenge to mitigation efforts.

There are worldwide approximately 4.3 million coffee (Coffea arabica) producing smallholders generating a large share of tropical developing countries' gross domestic product, notably in Central America. Their livelihoods and coffee production are facing major challenges due to projected climate change, requiring adaptation decisions that may range from changes in management practices to changes in crops or migration. Since management practices such as shade use and reforestation influence both climate vulnerability and carbon stocks in coffee, there may be synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation that could make it advantageous to jointly pursue both objectives. In some cases, carbon accounting for mitigation actions might even be used to incentivize and subsidize adaptation actions. To assess potential synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in smallholder coffee production systems, we quantified (i) the potential of changes in coffee production and processing practices as well as other livelihood activities to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, (ii) coffee farmers' climate change vulnerability and need for adaptation, including the possibility of carbon markets subsidizing adaptation. We worked with smallholder organic coffee farmers in Northern Nicaragua, using workshops, interviews, farm visits and the Cool Farm Tool software to calculate greenhouse gas balances of coffee farms. From the 12 activities found to be relevant for adaptation, two showed strong and five showed modest synergies with mitigation. Afforestation of degraded areas with coffee agroforestry systems and boundary tree plantings resulted in the highest synergies between adaptation and mitigation. Financing possibilities for joint adaptation-mitigation activities could arise through carbon offsetting, carbon insetting, and carbon footprint reductions. Non-monetary benefits such as technical assistance and capacity building could be effective in promoting such synergies at low transaction costs.

There are worldwide approximately 4.3 million coffee (Coffea arabica) producing smallholders generating a large share of tropical developing countries' gross domestic product, notably in Central America. Their livelihoods and coffee production are facing major challenges due to projected climate change, requiring adaptation decisions that may range from changes in management practices to changes in crops or migration. Since management practices such as shade use and reforestation influence both climate vulnerability and carbon stocks in coffee, there may be synergies between climate change adaptation and mitigation that could make it advantageous to jointly pursue both objectives. In some cases, carbon accounting for mitigation actions might even be used to incentivize and subsidize adaptation actions. To assess potential synergies between climate change mitigation and adaptation in smallholder coffee production systems, we quantified (i) the potential of changes in coffee production and processing practices as well as other livelihood activities to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions, (ii) coffee farmers' climate change vulnerability and need for adaptation, including the possibility of carbon markets subsidizing adaptation. We worked with smallholder organic coffee farmers in Northern Nicaragua, using workshops, interviews, farm visits and the Cool Farm Tool software to calculate greenhouse gas balances of coffee farms. From the 12 activities found to be relevant for adaptation, two showed strong and five showed modest synergies with mitigation. Afforestation of degraded areas with coffee agroforestry systems and boundary tree plantings resulted in the highest synergies between adaptation and mitigation. Financing possibilities for joint adaptation-mitigation activities could arise through carbon offsetting, carbon insetting, and carbon footprint reductions. Non-monetary benefits such as technical assistance and capacity building could be effective in promoting such synergies at low transaction costs.

The article makes two arguments. First, while fair trade has succeeded partially in reembedding market exchange within systems of social and moral relations, it has also proved susceptible to the power of corporate actors to disembed the alternative through a process of movement co-optation. Second, it argues that co-optation takes a unique form in the context of social movements whose principal tools to achieve social change are certification and labeling: it occurs primarily on the terrain of standards, in the form of weakening or dilution.

The Corporate Renewable Energy Buyers' Principles frame the challenges and common needs faced by large renewable energy buyers.As of January 2017, 65 companies have signed on, representing over 48 million MWh of annual demand by 2020, equivalent to powering 4.4 million American homes with clean, renewable energy. Corporate signatories developed these principles to spur progress on resolving the challenges they face when buying renewable energy, and to add their perspective to the future of the U.S. energy and electricity system.

Coffee is an important global beverage, and has received significant attention especially in terms of the social and environmental sustainability of its production. This paper calculates the product carbon footprint (PCF) and conducts an analysis of energy usage for six alternative coffee products. The analysis shows that espresso coffee had the lowest impact (0.13 kWh and 49 g CO2 per serve), while canned coffee provided the highest impact (0.76 kWh and 223 g CO2 per serve). The latte had the second highest embodied energy impact, with 0.54 kWh and the highest PCF of 224 g CO2 per serve. On a per millilitre basis however, espresso coffee provided the highest impact (0.0048 kWh/mL and 0.8 g CO2-eq/mL), followed by canned coffee and the latte. This indicates that care must be used in the selection of an appropriate functional unit, as the ranking of PCF can be overturned according to the basis of comparison. The highest contributing factors were the emissions from milk, packaging (for the can) and the production stages of the green coffee beans. Despite only holding around 17% of the market share of consumed coffee, the canned coffee product contributes around half of the national carbon footprint from coffee consumption. Current commercial incentives for consumers to use their own cups were compared to carbon taxation and found to value carbon approximately three orders of magnitude higher than carbon market rates.

Voluntary sustainability standards and certification offer a promising mechanism to mitigate the severe negative impacts of agricultural expansion and intensification on tropical biodiversity. From a conservation standpoint, certification of tropical agroforestry crops, especially coffee and cocoa, is of particular interest given the potentially high biodiversity value of agroforestry systems and the substantial market penetration of coffee and cocoa certification in recent years. Here, we review experience with coffee and cocoa certification, summarize evidence on conservation impacts, and explore future needs. While there is much evidence that environmental criteria behind certification support biodiversity conservation, it is less clear to what extent certification is the cause of improved conservation outcomes. Additionally, the farm?scale focus of current certification models may limit delivery of biodiversity conservation benefits, as maintenance of biodiversity depends on processes at larger landscape scales. To address this scale mismatch, we suggest that investment and innovation in certification over the next decade prioritize landscape conservation outcomes. This may be achieved by (1) linking existing certification mechanisms with broader landscape and ecosystem service management approaches and/or (2) expanding current certification models to consider the landscape itself as the certified unit.

This discussion paper assesses the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange (ECX) system enforced by the government in 2008. According to Leung, the implementation of the ECX has eroded the traceability of the Ethiopian coffee, causing a considerable decrease in the export prices. The author presents a brief history of the Ethiopian Commodity Exchange and compares it to the traditional coffee trading system that was active in the country from 1977 until 2008. Finally, he describes in details the functioning of the ECX, depicting the different trading steps and focusing on the commoditization of the product. Indeed, he assesses that through the selling system implemented with ECX, information about coffee traceability and other important characteristics of the product are not publicly shared when the coffee is presented to be sold in the market. Therefore, importers, having less information about the coffee, are not willing to pay the average price that was paid before the implementation of the ECX. According to Leung’s investigation, this system creates a 26% decrease of farmgate prices, causes economic losses for about 280 million USD. This paper is particularly interesting for traders active in the Ethiopian market and researchers interested to know more about the EXC dynamics.

Coffee flavor is extremely complex and arises from numerous chemical, biological and physical influences of cultivar, coffee cherry maturity, geographical growing location, production, processing, roasting and cup preparation. Not surprisingly there is a large volume of research published detailing the volatile and non-volatile compounds in coffee and that are likely to be playing a role in coffee flavor. Further, there is much published on the sensory properties of coffee. Nevertheless, the link between flavor components and the sensory properties expressed in the complex matrix of coffee is yet to be fully understood. This paper provides an overview of the chemical components that are thought to be involved in the flavor and sensory quality of Arabica coffee.

An on-farm pollination experiment was conducted during the June–August and November–February blooming seasons of 2007 to 2008, in 30 small-scale coffee fields characterised by different habitat and vegetation types. The study was conducted in order to determine the best pollinator groups for coffee in Uganda and to collect relevant field information and determine the pollination efficiency of different bee species. Results indicate that across blooming seasons, coffee flowers were visited by 24–36 bee species. Hypotrigona gribodoi was the most frequent flower visitor, comprising over 60% of 5941 bee-visits recorded. Foraging rate and pollination speed varied among bee species. Solitary bees foraged on more flowers than social bees, but they spent less time per flower visited. Solitary bees visited more coffee trees and fields, but deposited less pollen, whereas social bees visited less trees and coffee fields in the landscape, but deposited more pollen on flowers. Fruit set was of 87%, 64% and 0.9%, respectively, in hand-cross pollination, open pollination and controlled-pollination treatments. Fruit abortion due to self-pollination was insignificant in this study. There was variability in pollination efficiency of different bee species. Pollination efficiency varied more significantly with sociality than with other bee functional traits and was not significantly influenced by tongue length and bee body size. Single-flower visits by social and solitary bees resulted in 89.7% and 68.14% fruit set, respectively. The most efficient bee species was Meliponula ferruginea (98.3%) followed by Meliponula nebulata (97.1%). Thus, very good pollinator species were wild social bees (mainly stingless bees) as opposed to honeybees and solitary bees that were previously reported to be the best pollinators of coffee in Panama and Indonesia. Morphological and anatomical characteristics of the bee pollen storage features may explain the difference in foraging behaviour activities and in pollination efficiency of social and solitary afrotropical bee species visiting lowland coffee in Uganda. In addition, pollination efficiency was influenced by land-use intensity, field management systems and habitat types found in the immediate surroundings of coffee fields, but not by coffee field size, coffee genotypes and mass blooming wild vegetation. It is recommended to farmers to adopt pollinator-friendly conservation and farming practices such as keeping an uncultivated portion (25%–30%) of their farms as pollinator reservoirs, protecting semi-natural habitats found in the vicinity of coffee fields, as well as promoting high on-farm tree cover to benefit a functionally diverse pollinator community.

Arabica coffee has been commercially grown and exported from Burundi for decades, even during periods of economic and political instability. The coffee sector is crucial to the Burundian economy, not only because it provides employment to a large number of smallholder farmers in the country, but also because the majority of the country’s foreign exchange earnings derive from coffee exports.

This research article unfolds the important role of bees, birds and bats in the quality and quantity of coffee Arabica productions in Tanzanian plantations surrounding Mount Kilimanjaro. The study was conducted between September 2011 and November 2012 among three different plantations system, coffee plants grown in home-gardens, shaded-plantations and sun-plantations. In all the different systems, researchers found that having access to pollinators and pest predators increased the quality and quantity of the cherries. Specifically, results showed that birds and bats support the yield by preying on insects that would otherwise damage the quantity of cherries on the plant. Therefore, those plants which did not have access to pest predators when the research was being conducted produced less cherries. Pollinators, additionally, increased the weight of the cherries by around 7%, improving therefore the quality of the coffee. This research proves that access to more biodiversity is particularly beneficial for coffee production. This article will be of particular interest to agronomists, biodiversity specialists and other farm management professionals.