At Their Own Risk: Coffee Farmers and Debt in Nicaragua, I870-I930

Keyword(s):  
Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 60
Author(s):  
Patricia Ruiz-García ◽  
Cecilia Conde-Álvarez ◽  
Jesús David Gómez-Díaz ◽  
Alejandro Ismael Monterroso-Rivas

Local knowledge can be a strategy for coping with extreme events and adapting to climate change. In Mexico, extreme events and climate change projections suggest the urgency of promoting local adaptation policies and strategies. This paper provides an assessment of adaptation actions based on the local knowledge of coffee farmers in southern Mexico. The strategies include collective and individual adaptation actions that farmers have established. To determine their viability and impacts, carbon stocks and fluxes in the system’s aboveground biomass were projected, along with water balance variables. Stored carbon contents are projected to increase by more than 90%, while maintaining agroforestry systems will also help serve to protect against extreme hydrological events. Finally, the integration of local knowledge into national climate change adaptation plans is discussed and suggested with a local focus. We conclude that local knowledge can be successful in conserving agroecological coffee production systems.


Author(s):  
Heidi J. Albers ◽  
Stephanie Brockmann ◽  
Beatriz Ávalos-Sartorio

Abstract Low and highly variable prices plague the coffee market, generating concerns that coffee farmers producing in shade systems under natural forests, as in biodiversity hotspot Oaxaca, Mexico, will abandon production and contribute to deforestation and reduced ecosystem services. Using stakeholder information, we build a setting-informed model to analyze farmers' decisions to abandon shade-grown coffee production and their reactions to policy to reduce abandonment. Exploring price premiums for bird-friendly certified coffee, payments for ecosystem services, and price floors as policies, we find that once a farmer is on the path toward abandonment, it is difficult to reverse. However, implementing policies early that are low cost to farmers – price floors and no-cost certification programs – can stem abandonment. Considering the abandonment that policy avoids per dollar spent, price floors are the most cost-effective policy, yet governments prefer certification programs that push costs onto international coffee consumers who pay the price premium.


2015 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 37-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bhanu Bhakta Panthi

Coffee among the Nepalese farmers is one of the breaks-through from the traditional subsistence food crops to agrobased industrial crop. It was planted under multi cropping pattern with fruits species; Musa paradiciaca L (banana), Citrus lemon (Lemon), Artocarpus heterophyllus (jack fruit), Pyrus pyrifolia (pear), and Psidium guajava L (guava), fodders species, cereals and vegetables. Coffee farmers of Gulmi and Lalitpur tried to manage the orchards through shade management, intercropping, optimum manuring, and protection from pests. For this, farmers adopted various management techniques; handpicking and destroying, use of local pesticides, use of pheromones trap. More than 90 % of the coffee farmers were used local pesticides but with random composition and amount. Most preferred botanicals at farmer’s level are; Allium sativum L., Allium cepa L., Azadirachta indica, Eupatorium adenophorum, Utrica dioca L. Artemesia indica, Zanthoxylum Zanthoxylum. Though, these techniques were applied, farmers still were not successful fully to overcome the problem of White Stem Borer (Xylotrechus quadripes). This might be due to untimely application and not proper composition to prepare in large quantity. This prepared pesticide was only effective to control small and soft bodied insects. The using of botanicals was observed to reduce the chances of pest attack and found a significant step toward green pesticides.Journal of Institute of Science and Technology, 2014, 19(2): 37-44


F1000Research ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 1809 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gilbert John Miito ◽  
Noble Banadda

Agricultural biomass is widely recognized as a clean and renewable energy source, with increasing potential to replace conventional fossil fuels in the energy market. Uganda, like other developing countries, has a high dependency (91%) on wood fuel, leading to environmental degradation. With a coffee production of 233 Metric Tonnes per annum, relating to 46.6 Mega Tonnes of coffee husks from processing, transforming these husks into syngas through gasification can contribute to resolving the existing energy challenges. The objective of this article is to briefly review the energy potential of coffee husks through gasification, and how the gasification process could increase energy recoveries for coffee farmers. Previous  findings indicate that the 46.6 Mega Tonnes per year of coffee husks generated in Uganda, with a heating value of 18.34 MJ/kg, is capable of generating 24 GWh of energy. This will address a 0.7% portion of the energy situation in Uganda, while protecting the environment.


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