Sustainable coffee production can support communities to live and produce while ensuring that the demands they make on nature do not exceed their resources.
How can specialty coffee production preserve forests and biodiversity, maintain beneficial ecosystem services, fix carbon, improve degraded landscapes and provide a sustainable livelihood for farmers and their families?
There are no research studies that provide effective data on sustainable coffee production. There are several projects in various parts of the world that help to better understand the synergy between coffee cultivation and biodiversity, with the aim of gaining a more detailed understanding of the coffee supply chain (value chain and circular chain).
Thanks to Ecuador's diverse regions, there is the possibility of funding projects that help
Specialty coffee has the potential to improve the income of producers, their communities and to conserve biodiversity. It is a product of very high and excellent quality that, according to certain characteristics and processes from its cultivation, harvesting, processing, roasting and quality controls, can reach very high prices.
In the last 10 years the demand for specialty coffees has been growing steadily, but still only 30% of the world's coffee is speciality coffee. This forecasts a strong economic potential.
As an example, if farmers dedicated 25% of their harvest to specialty coffee, their annual income from coffee would increase by 30%. If they dedicated all their crops to specialty coffee, their income from coffee could increase by 110-120%. To support this increase in production quality, projects should be funded to help increase operational efficiency and improve technology.
further information:
Read the paper: Schuit, P., Moat, J., Gole, T.W. et al. (2021). The potential for income improvement and biodiversity conservation via specialty coffee in Ethiopia. PeerJ 9:e10621.
Link: https://peerj.com/articles/10621/
