Coffee Production and Climate Change in Ethiopia

Abstract

Ethiopia is the center of origin and diversity of arabica coffee. Arabica coffee is the most widely consumed, over 70% in volume of production and over 90% of traded value globally. 157,437 thousands of 60 kg bags coffee were produced in 2016 in the world, including 101,552 thousand bags of arabica coffee. Ethiopia is the leading coffee producer in Africa, and the 5th in the world. Ethiopian coffee is known for its unique characteristics, aroma and flavor. Coffee production in Ethiopia recorded an average annual growth rate of 2.6% during the last 50 years, increasing to 3.6% since 1990. Ethiopia has also a strong domestic coffee consumption culture, which frequently accounts for over half of the production. Coffee is produced in Ethiopia under different production systems, i.e. forest, semi-forest, plantation and garden. The area of plantation and home garden coffee are increasing despite the decrease in forest and semi-forest coffee.

Ethiopian coffee forest area is shrinking from time to time, largely due to increasing population, land use conflict, high deforestation, expansion of large-scale coffee and tea farms, and other agricultural practices. Ethiopia has a wide range of coffee genetic diversity. Around 11,691 arabica coffee germplasm accessions from different coffee growing areas throughout Ethiopia were collected and conserved ex-situ in field gene banks. The major challenges facing the coffee sector is the threat of coffee genetic erosion and various production constraints like disease and pest prevalence, replacement of coffee by other crops, coffee market price fluctuation. Concerning climate change, data from weather stations of Ethiopia showed that the mean annual temperature has increased by 1.3 °C between 1960 and 2006, at an average rate of 0.28 °C per decade, and by 0.3 °C per decade in the south western region. In addition, spring and summer rains have declined by 15–20% since the mid-1970s and late 2000s, in southern, south-western and south-eastern Ethiopia. The mean annual temperature of Ethiopia is projected to increase by 1.1–3.1 °C by the 2060s, and 1.5–5.1 °C by the 2090s.