CHINCHINA, Colombia — “Before, the seasons seemed etched into the calendar, with well-defined periods of drought and rain. Today, the climate has gone completely mad!” says coffee grower Oscar Gomez from his farm nestled in the mountains of Colombia’s Eje Cafetero, or the Coffee Axis. Climate change is profoundly disrupting coffee production in Colombia, the world’s third-largest coffee producer, after Brazil and Vietnam. The country is also facing extreme weather events from successive cycles of La Niña and El Niño that bring either torrential rains or prolonged droughts. These fluctuations disrupt agricultural cycles and weaken harvests, say researchers, while rising temperatures encourage the proliferation of harmful insects and diseases caused by fungi. In the face of these, researchers and farmers are taking multiple measures to try to safeguard the coffee crops. The National Federation of Coffee Growers (FEDECAFE) of Colombia’s coffee research center, Cenicafé, is continuously developing disease-resistant coffee varieties to try to adapt to the latest changes. A new coffee variety, Castillo 2.0, came out in December 2024, and researchers say they hope it ensures that farmers receive a fair income for their coffee production and helps them face climate change. Coffee rust is a parasitic fungi, Hemileia vastatrix, that latches onto leaves and reduces the crop’s ability to conduct photosynthesis. Image courtesy of Noel Rojo. Meanwhile, some farmers are reverting to traditional farming methods, cultivating non-hybrid coffee varieties, and developing diverse agroecology techniques where various species are cultivated together to help mitigate the effects of climate change — for…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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