Brazil is widely known as the world’s largest coffee producer — but what happens when it runs out of space to grow coffee? Recent reports suggest that coffee farming in Brazil is driving deforestation and making coffee even harder to grow. Per a new report from Coffee Watch, it is estimated that nearly 1,200 square miles of forest were cleared for coffee cultivation between 2001 and 2023, and in areas with a high concentration of coffee-growing operations, more than 42,000 square miles of forest are now gone.
While coffee is not the leading cause of deforestation in Brazil, experts say its role in deforestation isn’t talked about enough. Rising global demand for coffee is pushing cultivation into forested areas, which can break the natural water cycle. Here’s how ‘coffee’s quiet clearing’ could make coffee even harder to grow and impact our environment.
Ecosystem effects of deforestation
Deforestation in tropical regions is scientifically proven to cause less rainfall, disrupting the natural moisture cycle. In tropical regions like Brazil, the fine-tuned ecosystem is essential to make its own moisture.
“When they’re cleared, the process that keeps air moist and rainfall regular slows dramatically. That means less rain, drier soils, longer dry seasons, and less favorable growing conditions,” says Jennifer Kaplan, University of Redlands Presidio Center for Sustainable Studies. “Once that cycle starts, it becomes a feedback loop. Simply put, deforestation reduces rainfall, lowers rainfall, stresses crops, and crop stress drives more clearing. We’ve seen this dynamic before in palm oil, and it’s equally relevant to coffee.”
Global coffee demand & supply chains
“Every few years, there’s a big freeze in Brazil that will wipe out a large portion of the annual crop,” says Garrett Oden, Publisher at Fresh Cup. “This very quickly leads to high prices for green coffee buyers and then for consumers down the line. Deforestation leads to many of the same issues — lower yields, lower quality crops — but on a longer time scale. There might not be a big price swing a few months after the big freeze with deforestation, but the impacts on prices and supply chain sustainability are really meaningful over the long term.”
Not only can deforestation for coffee growing potentially impact consumers down the line on a quality and pricing level, but the environmental impact is also concerning. Per Oden, the EU is working on legislation called the EUDR, which requires that European green buyers prove that there is no deforestation being caused in the coffee that they import.
“This is by far the most direct intervention to the deforestation problem, but it is very complex and has already been delayed multiple years, because creating the systems where coffee producers can do survey programs, including satellite imagery, to prove that they are not deforesting, is very burdensome. It’s a huge step in the right direction, but it is proving to be a giant headache in coffee-producing countries, especially in those with low infrastructure, like many countries in Africa.”
Other environmentally sustainable coffee-growing methods do exist, and some, like Kaplan, say deforestation doesn’t need to be inevitable. “Higher yields on existing land, agroforestry systems that maintain canopy cover, and stronger zero-deforestation commitments can help all meet rising demand while protecting the ecosystems that make tropical commodities like coffee possible in the first place,” she says.
