Agriculture and Environment: Coffee

Better Management Practices: Coffee Production in Natural Forests

In several areas, but particularly Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia, coffee production is expanding into natural forests.

Due both to the associated environmental damage and the short-term nature of the investment, this type of expansion of coffee planting should be prohibited.

Robusta coffee production requirements
The vast majority of expansion of this type is for the production of robusta coffee because it is more productive in hotter, sunnier climates and on poorer soils.

However, given the amount of degraded land or marginal existing agricultural lands that could support robusta coffee trees, there is no reason to clear pristine habitat to plant coffee.

With the agrochemicals available today and with improved overall production and management practices, much previously degraded land can be brought back into production.

Permanent protection status for forests
Another way to halt the expansion of coffee into biodiverse-rich areas around the world is to create and enforce permanent protection status in tropical forest areas that are located on the frontier of expanding coffee-producing areas.

Implementing zoning regulations
These areas can be identified in part due to their biodiversity value, but they can also and increasingly be identified because they are not suitable for long-term, sustained production of coffee. In some areas, zoning may be a useful tool for protecting lands whose slopes or fragile soils make them unsuitable for long-term coffee production.

Restricting coffee production, creating protected areas, and implementing zoning regulations are all ways to prevent needless environmental degradation that benefits no one in the end.