As coffee farmers in India open new land to raise their crops they move into areas inhabited by native wildlife. In the case of India one of those wildlife critters is the Indian elephant! India is the 7th leading coffee producer after Honduras and before Uganda. It exports nearly 6 million bags (60 kg each) each year compared to 43 million for Brazil, 27 million for Vietnam and 13 million for Colombia. A problem that the top three producers do not have is wild elephants roaming into the coffee plantation! WTOP News notes the issue of your coffee habit and elephant habitat.
Tom Grant, a journalism professor at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College and director of the documentary “Elephants in the Coffee,” said in the last 30 years, India’s coffee industry has doubled. As a result, coffee plantations have taken over the natural habitats of many animals, including elephants.
“We were seeing more and more elephants forced into captivity, forced into chains, as one solution to try to keep them away from harming people or harming crops in these coffee plantations,” said Grant, who first became aware of the issue on a trip to Southern India in 2012.
Conflict between agriculture and wildlife is not new or unique to India. Elephants see coffee plantations as forests – they find water, shade and food there, Grant said. They also find fear.
If elephants become a problem for coffee growers the elephants are scared off and sometimes captured. They are huge animals and they scare people. Likewise the elephants become frightened and then become aggressive. About 300 people a year are killed by elephants in India.
Major coffee companies such as Starbucks and Tata have instituted practices on their farms that move toward coexistence. Their workers monitor elephants and move around them as they come through the plantations.
“When the elephants are in one sector, they warn all the workers through text messages, and then move the workers to another area,” Grant said.
The problem is that coffee farmers and elephants are competing for the same habitat as coffee growing is forced into smaller areas due to climate changes and related coffee infestations such as coffee leaf rust. We wrote about how climate change has driven coffee production to high elevations.
In the coffee growing region of Colombia they grow varieties like Caturra at lower altitudes around 3,000 to 5,000 while Arabica grows best in the 5,000 feet and above range. Part of this is because of coffee leaf rust which thrives at lower altitudes. As temperatures have risen on the mountainsides of Colombia, Arabica is being planted higher and higher while left rust resistant Caturra replaces it in the low and middle altitudes. This problem is not limited to Colombia as climate change drives coffee farmers to higher elevations.
The problem when it heats up is that it also can get very dry and the combination of heat and drought in an area like Ethiopia which has an arid climate anyway can be devastating. Coffee farmers will keep moving up the slopes so long as there is room to plant and the necessary water.
The other issue is that coffee leaf rust is more prevalent at lower altitudes.