Coffee vs Climate Change

Riped coffee cherries © Thuan Sarzynski

“It’s warm and rainy today. Coffee trees are flowering, if it’s too wet flowers will rot before giving fruits. In December, it should be cold and dry, the weather is becoming weird recently…”

My brother is a middleman in the Central Highlands of Vietnam. He buys coffee to farmers, roasts it and sells it to coffee shops and retailers in Vietnam. He was worried.

My brother and his coffee roaster © Thuan Sarzynski

Coffee is an important cash crop in Vietnam. Important in volume but also in the number of smallholder farmers relying on it to make a living. There are about 25 million producers relying on coffee yield to make an income in Vietnam; this income is needed to send their children to school and buy food or medicines.

In the past decades, coffee has largely contributed to the development of rural areas especially in the central highlands of Vietnam, in the provinces of Dak Lak, Dak Nong, Gia Lai, Kon Tum, Lam Dong, as well as in the poor Northern provinces like Son La and Lao Cai. Farmers have learnt the procedures to dry coffee, package it and sell it to international markets to earn a consequent income. While the world most appreciated coffee is the Arabica, Vietnam mainly grows and sells Robusta, another species of coffee more…