Africans bet on coffee resistant to climate change – 05/17/2023 – Environment

Let’s start with the bad news. The two coffee species most of us drink — Arabica and Robusta — are at serious risk in this era of climate change.

Now let’s get to the good news. Farmers in one of Africa’s top coffee exporting countries are growing an entirely new variety that is better able to withstand the heat, drought and diseases that global warming has exacerbated.

For years they have just been blending this variety in bags of cheaper Robusta coffee. This year they are trying to sell it to the world under its real name: liberica excelsa.

“Even when the heat is excessive, this variety does very well,” said Golooba John, who grows coffee near the town of Zirobwe in central Uganda. In recent years, as his Robusta trees have succumbed to pests and disease, he has replaced them with Liberica trees. Today John has 1,000 Liberica trees and just 50 Robusta trees in his 2.5-hectare coffee plantation.

He also drinks Liberica coffee. He says it’s more aromatic than Robusta, “tastier”.

Catherine Kiwuka, a coffee expert at the National Agricultural Research Organization, described the liberica excelsa like a kind of cafe that hasn’t been getting the attention it deserves. She is part of an experiment to introduce Liberica coffee to the world.

If the experiment works, it could hold important lessons for small coffee farmers in other parts of the world, demonstrating the importance of wild varieties in a warming world. A liberica excelsa It is native to tropical central Africa. It was cultivated briefly in the late 15th century and then disappeared. Then came the ravages of climate change. Producers brought Liberica back.

“In the face of climate change, we would do well to think about other species that are able to keep the coffee industry working globally,” said Kiwuka.

At the moment, the objective is to cultivate liberica excelsa high quality for export.

Volcafe, a global coffee trading company, expects to export up to three tonnes this year to specialist roasters overseas, including in the UK and US.

Although Arabica and Robusta are the two most cultivated coffee species in the world, there are more than one hundred species that grow in the wild. A variety of Liberica has been grown in Southeast Asia for a century.

Another variety is liberica excelsa, which is native to lowland areas in Uganda. Compared to Robusta, which is also native to Uganda and is the dominant species grown in the region, Liberica takes longer to mature and produce fruit.

Liberica coffee trees reach heights much greater than those of the robusta species. Each tree can reach eight meters in height, so farmers have to climb bamboo ladders to harvest. Or else they have to prune the trees so that the branches grow laterally, not vertically.

About 200 growers have been growing Liberica in small pockets, selling it to local traders along with their Robusta crops and receiving Robusta-like prices. Kiwuka said he feels like the producers were misled.

According to her, Liberica coffee has a stronger aroma and is of superior quality; therefore, producers should be getting paid more for it.

In 2016 she invited coffee scholar Aaron Davis from the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in England to visit Zirobwe. At first, Davis was skeptical. He had tasted Liberica elsewhere and found it to be “a vegetable soup”, in his words.

But the next day he ground Zirobwe’s grain in his hotel room. Yes, a coffee researcher always takes a portable grinder with him on his travels.

“Not bad, really,” he remembers thinking. The coffee had potential.

Davis is not unaware of the risks linked to coffee growing. He found in his research that climate change and forest clearing have put more than half of the world’s wild coffee species at risk of extinction.

He and Kiwuka joined forces. They decided to encourage producers to improve the harvesting and drying of their Liberica crops. Instead of mixing them with Robusta beans, they should sell Liberica separately. If production met certain standards, they would receive a higher price.

“In a warming world and an era where supply chains are being disrupted, Liberica coffee could emerge as a major crop,” they wrote in December in the scientific journal Nature.

Liberica coffee is already an important variety in Deogratius Ocheng’s coffee plantations.

When it rains little, as was the case last year, his Robusta coffee plantation, with an area of ​​0.80 hectares, suffers. Last year, the leaves withered and the fruits did not form correctly. The same problems have plagued much of Uganda, where Robusta is the dominant species.

According to the Uganda Coffee Development Authority, coffee exports are expected to drop this year compared to last year, due to drought and pests.

Ocheng said that if he had relied solely on robusta, he would be living in extreme poverty right now. Luckily, he had an equal area planted with Liberica.

^{Translated by Clara Allain}