Specialty Coffee Farmers' Climate Change Concern and Perceived Ability to Adapt

Abstract

Climate change studies predict that rising temperatures and water shortages will negatively impact coffee production suitability at lower elevations (Rivera et al., 2015). As climate change becomes increasingly severe, an assessment of coffee producers’ ability and willingness to adapt would be especially valuable to those hoping to create adaptation strategies and policies. This had led to a significant growth of research surrounding the livelihood of farmers, as well as their perceptions of climate change and adaptation. However, research focused specifically on specialty coffee is still lacking. With higher quality considerations, different value chains, and lower price volatility, specialty coffee farmers are an especially interesting area of study (Vellucci, 2015). This study aims to fill this knowledge gap. To do this, a survey was conducted among Costa Rican specialty coffee producers in order to identify whether their concern about climate change and their perceived ability to adapt are affected by perceptions of climate change risk, financing, farmer demographics, coffee management practices, biophysical factors, access to information, or perceived adaptation methods. Survey responses were coded, quantified, and analyzed through statistical software using analysis of variance and linear regressions. Previous studies show more concern about coffee price volatility than climate change (Tucker et al., 2009; Eakin et al., 2006; Gay et al. 2006). However, this study found greater concern about climate change than falling coffee prices among surveyed farmers, reinforcing that specialty coffee farmers may be better positioned than nonspeciality growers to handle market volatility. Nevertheless, respondents felt less prepared to face the impacts of climate change. This study hypothesized that farmers with higher levels of climate change concern would have the lowest levels of perceived ability to adapt. However, it was found that farmer’s concern about climate change did not correlate with their feelings of preparedness to address it. These few results among others detailed in the report signal a need to address the climate change concerns and adaptation capacity of speciality coffee growers. As Costa Rican policy makers, development organizations, and coffee importers and exporters build multistakeholder strategies to support this key segment of farmers, they should prioritize the implementation of tools that build adaptive capacity in addition to traditional market based mechanisms like promotion and trade policies. These results encourage the development of future studies to explore which specific tools at the farm, household, landscape, or political level would most enhance adaptive capacity of speciality coffee growers.