You know that weird feeling you get when you finally watch the movie version of your favorite book? You’ve read every page and spent hours imagining every character and every bit of scenery—you think you know exactly what to expect. Of course, when the lights go down it’s completely different.
The coffee farms surrounding Jinotega, Nicaragua are my Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. After nearly a year of reading every bit of research I could find on coffee agroforestry, I was sure I knew what I was getting into when I joined the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Nicaragua on a project that aims to estimate carbon storage in coffee systems surrounding the city of Jinotega. This project is part of the Humidtropics CGIAR Research Program in collaboration with Bioversity International and local development organizations.
All of those research papers left a few parts out, though. They forgot to mention the exhausting treks up and down steep muddy hills, the hundreds of mosquito bites, the way your head spins as you try to understand new procedures in a foreign culture and a language you barely speak, the sudden downpours that soak you and your data notebook before you have a chance to find shelter under a banana leaf, the flat tires on unpaved country roads, or the taste of the fruit you eat straight from the shade trees you’re studying.
Why coffee?
The city of Jinotega is tucked in a valley, surrounded by mountains that support hundreds of coffee farms.
Small shade coffee farms have the potential to provide a wide range of ecosystem services: they can serve as valuable habitat, filter water, and even help slow climate change by storing significant amounts of carbon in the form of plant biomass.
Coffee is Nicaragua’s largest export, and its production is being seriously threatened by climate change. Increasing temperature and decreasing rainfall will likely shrink the range of coffee-growing zones while increasing the prevalence of crop pests and diseases.
CIAT’s mission is to fight poverty and hunger through increasing the eco-efficiency of agriculture. Here in Jinotega, where more than 60% of Nicaragua’s coffee is grown, the focus is on smallholder livelihoods. Shade coffee farming already provides farmers with additional food crops, firewood, and timber. As global carbon markets develop, selling carbon credits could bring Nicaraguan farmers a new source of income.
The circumference of a shade tree is directly related to the amount of carbon it stores. We measured around 5,000 tree trunks.
Where I come in
My project aims to create an estimate of carbon storage in coffee farms, and the first step to creating this estimate is to visit these farms. In this data-collection phase, my team of technicians took soil samples and recorded the size and species of shade trees at 70 farms surrounding the city of Jinotega.
After a month in the field, I’m sitting in front of a computer with a stack of notebooks that represent all of this hard work. There are little reminders scattered through the pages, like a smudge of dirt that represents the time I just barely avoided sliding down a steep hillside, or a rip where I tried to write on the wet paper as we scrambled to finish data collection during a heavy rain.
Although I’m no longer hopping into a Land Cruiser every morning at sunrise to spend all day slogging through the coffee growing regions, I still have a lot of work ahead of me. My task now is to turn this pile of paper into a usable dataset for analysis, and to turn that dataset into carbon storage estimates.
My team of hardworking technicians from Humidtropics and local NGOs took a break from data collection to pose for a picture with a farmer who participated in our study.
In the next phase, I will select a few farms that are representative of the different farm management methods I’ve observed. We’ll return to these farms to collect more data, which we will use to simulate the outcome of potential changes in shade management. Adding, moving, or replacing the current shade trees could result in farms that store more carbon and provide farmers with more economic benefits—such as food and firewood—without impacting coffee harvests.
With these recommendations, we hope that CIAT can provide farmers with tools to help adapt to climate change, and create more eco-efficient coffee production in Nicaragua.
Great summary! Glad the first phase of the field work went well and looking forward to reading about the next steps. I am looking forward to learning more about the linkages between carbon storage and other ecosystem benefits of diversity in the shade trees.
Hi Vanessa,
This is great insight into what it is like working on the ground day to day. What is your relationship like with local farmers? Do they respect and support the work you are doing to maximize carbon sequestration or is the community more financially minded?
I appreciate how you remind me that regardless how much prep and understanding you have when your in the field you are always thinking on your feet. Your work is very inspiring thank you for posting!
Hi Maya!
Farmers are overall a very friendly bunch! They have agreed to participate in a number of ongoing monitoring projects through the cooperatives they belong to, and this project is an extension of previous work on soil analysis. Most of the research that cooperatives facilitate is meant to provide the farmers with concrete financial benefits (for example, analysis of soil nutrients will help farmers choose the right balance of fertilizers to apply so they don’t waste money on unnecessary agrochemicals).
Farmers do seem to have a really thorough understanding of the link between carbon emissions and climate change, and longer dry periods and higher temperatures are already affecting harvests here. I think the majority of farmers saw the connection between my project and a finanical outcome for them. Most are also just proud to show off their trees and share a cup of last year’s harvest with us technicians.
The community aspect of your project is wonderful, that is really how sustainable change happens. It is great to hear about how people can work together and bringing each other up even if it is for different motives.
thanks for sharing!
Always fun to sort through field notes and try to remember what you meant by that scribble. It’ll be great to hear about different adaptations to the shade management that you find provide the most benefit. I’m curious about the mix of over/understory and types of products that can be integrated in addition to coffee as the climate shifts.
Vanessa! Your experience sounds so interesting and wonderful and challenging. I love your anecdotes. It sounds like you and CIAT are doing such important work and I definitely look forward to reading your conclusions after your digest all of that data!
I know very little about the coffee trade but I always found it to be really interesting since it has become such a cultural hallmark in the US and are totally dependent on it to be imported to us.
Do you know if shade-grown coffee is marketed as such outside Nicaragua? I would be interested to learn more about the end of the chain and whether people are consciously purchasing shade-grown coffee to support these kinds of growing practices. Is there much effort or incentive in Nicaragua to increase or expand production in the country? Also, is there a different flavor profile? I would be curious if that could be used as an additional marketing tool to expand the market for shade grown coffee.
Thanks again and I look forward to hearing more!
Don’t let Hawaii hear you say that we’re TOTALLY dependent on import! 😉
Shade is being used as a selling point more often these days, for sure. Local knowledge holds that shade-grown coffee is higher quality, though I’m not sure how big the difference is.
Check out the packaging in the coffee aisle at Hannaford sometime–I’m sure you’ll see a few that say something about shade. There are a few certification seals that connote shade production, also, like Bird Friendly or Rainforest Alliance certification.
In regards to your question about expanding production, I’m not sure if you mean of shade coffee specifically or of all coffee, but this is a pretty interesting area. Overproduction in the past caused coffee prices to fall dramatically, so cooperatives don’t see much advantage in just buying up huge harvests. Specialty coffee offers a better profit margin (or at least sells more quickly), so things like shade, fair trade, and organic farming are being promoted by all of the cooperatives here in Jinotega.
Hi Vanessa,
Looking forward to hearing more -I may use this area as a case in my new global food politics class -any discussion of birds and the shade grown coffee? Glad to know that it is going well! Monique
That would be great! It’s a fascinating area. I’ve definitely seen some cool birds out in the fincas…motmots, oropendolas, and hummingbirds almost every day. The turquoise-crowned motmot is the national bird, so people definitely have a lot of appreciation for that species. However, things like Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certification are not very common.