UMass Amherst scientists win NSF award to help re-envision the growing, purchasing and selling of coffee.
Coffee, that hero of the underslept, comes with enormous environmental and social costs, from the loss of forest habitats as forests are converted to crops, to the financial precarity of small-scale farmers whose livelihoods depend upon the impulses of international markets. Now, thanks to a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant of $979,720, Timothy Randhir, University of Massachusetts Amherst teacher of environmental preservation, and David King, of the USDA Forest Service Northern Research Station, will embark upon a five-year effort to make Honduran coffee sustainable across environmental, social and financial fronts.
The answer lies in what Randhir has actually formerly called “a merging technique,” which is a way of connecting the ultra-local– such as the work done by the small Honduran coffee planters with whom the group will work– to the international both socially, economically, and ecologically. In numerous of these places, coffee production is the primary source of economic activity, yet standard approaches of coffee production integrated with yield and market volatility have resulted in interlinked issues of environmental destruction, economic difficulty, and social crises.
Human migration, too, is affected by the coffee industry, notes Randhir. Honduras is the 5th largest coffee producer in the world and the biggest coffee manufacturer in Central America; coffee is the primary source of earnings for more than 100,000 Honduran families and offers work for about a million individuals.
The research study, which is part of a $3.4 million partnership between UMass, Tulane University, the University of North Carolina Wilmington and Indiana University in Pennsylvania, focuses around one question: “How can we make sustainable farming and forest conservation really pay for itself?” asks King
Martim Murillo determines water quality of Rio Jacagua, helped by Farlem Espana. Credit: David King.
The answer depends on what Randhir has formerly called “a convergence approach,” which is a way of connecting the ultra-local– such as the work done by the little Honduran coffee planters with whom the group will work– to the international both socially, economically, and ecologically. About 70% of the worlds coffee is produced on working landscapes at high altitudes on previously forested land, mainly by small-scale, household farms in low- and middle-income nations. In a lot of these places, coffee production is the principal source of financial activity, yet conventional methods of coffee production combined with yield and market volatility have resulted in interlinked problems of environmental degradation, financial difficulty, and social crises.
Randhir and his colleagues have developed a suite of extremely delicate models, jointly referred to as the Multi-Scale Ecosystem Framework, to study the many interactions between humans, the environment, and global economies so that they can comprehend which interventions will have what effect, both on a international and regional scale.
The trick the team will carry out is to determine how ecologically sustainable coffee-growing practices, which take advantage of the environment services provided by jungle, saved on coffee farms, can yield greater and more steady earnings for regional Honduran growers while likewise supplying the worlds coffee drinkers with a stable amount of premium liquid caffeine. A huge part of this research involves setting up and studying the impacts that a new generation of solar-powered commercial coffee dryers, which will change older, wood-fired clothes dryers, has on environmental and economic sustainability.
Its no understatement to state that Randhir and Kings project will discuss simply about everything. “I got into this through my interest in songbird conservation,” says King. The majority of the warblers here in Massachusetts, that we think of as “ours,” invest their winters in the tropics, consisting of in Honduras. “Unless their winter habitat is protected,” states King, “we cant support what we consider our native birds.” Human migration, too, is affected by the coffee market, notes Randhir. “As small farmers livelihoods start to weaken, they migrate. If we can figure out how to help sustain the farms themselves, then farmers can stay in their homes.”
Honduras is the 5th largest coffee manufacturer in the world and the largest coffee manufacturer in Central America; coffee is the primary source of earnings for more than 100,000 Honduran families and provides work for about a million individuals. The team will focus their efforts on the 12,000 square-kilometer Yoro Biological Corridor as a test-case to scale up their design, supplying insights that the team prepares for will help inform worldwide farming policy and practice.
” The most significant attraction of our research,” states Randhir, “is the method that the environmental, financial, and social all come together toward a sustainable approach to agriculture.”
