FEATURE-Nicaraguan coffee farmers brew fresh plans after hurricanes wreck harvests Higher temperatures, storms and disease plague coffee production Co-operative works with farmers to try new crops and methods Pressure to migrate but most would rather find a way to stay By Anna-Catherine Brigida JINOTEGA, Nicaragua, March 1 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Maria Gonzalez, 50, knows that growing coffee in Nicaragua s northern mountains - as she has done since she was a little girl - gets harder and harder each year.Reuters | Managua | Updated: 01-03-2021 13:53 IST | Created: 01-03-2021 13:31 IST
Representative image Image Credit: ANI Higher temperatures, storms, and disease plague coffee production Co-operative works with farmers to try new crops and methods
Climate change hits Nicaraguan coffee farmers Rising temperatures spoil harvests and disease wiped out half of the region’s crop in the northern mountains 01 March 2021 - 15:44 Anna-Catherine Brigida Picture: 123RF/BELCHONOK
Jinotega Maria Gonzalez knows that growing coffee in Nicaragua’s northern mountains as she has done since she was a little girl gets harder and harder each year.
Rising temperatures are spoiling harvests when berries ripen too fast and a coffee leaf disease wiped out about half of the region’s crop between 2012 and 2014, killing most of Gonzalez’s plants.
Just as her new plants were starting to flourish, whipping winds and torrential rains from hurricanes Eta and Iota last November uprooted the bushes and shook the unripe berries to the ground. With an initial hard few years now stretching into a decade, coffee farmers such as Gonzalez face a tough decision: stay loyal to their coffee crop or find a new way to survive.
Some Nicaraguan coffee farmers are experimenting with a more diverse and sustainable mix of crops, which could prove to be more profitable and better equipped to handle rising temperatures.
ANNA-CATHERINE BRIGIDA, of Thomson Reuters Foundation, reports on the challenges coffee farmers in Nicaragua are facing thanks to rising temperatures - and two hurricanes which impacted the country late last year.