Sustainability-Intensification Trade-offs in Coffee Agroforestry in Central America

Demand for increasing agricultural production, from existing land area, requires the intensification of production. At the same time there is a need for increased sustainability, both in terms of sustaining crop productivity under conditions of climate and market variation, and maintaining ecosystem services to humanity in general. Agroforestry systems have been posed as a way to combine productive land-use with environmental sustainability. Coffee agri-systems vary from intensive monoculture plantations to forest-like coffee agroforests and thus provide a model system to evaluate the trade-offs and potential synergies between intensification and sustainability. Coffee agri-systems will be compared in two countries in Central America, Costa Rica where production has been more intensive even within agroforestry systems and Guatemala where traditional coffee agroforestry systems predominate. A long-term coffee agroforestry experiment was established in Costa Rica in 2000 comparing different agroforestry shade trees and coffee monoculture under different levels of agronomic inputs. Provisioning, supporting and indicators of regulating ecosystem services will be evaluated in this experiment and on 60-80 coffee farms in each country representing different typologies of coffee production. The typologies will cover a range of intensity of production (levels of fertilizer use) and sustainability (levels of shade trees). This will evaluate the capacity of each system to provide supporting services (light, nutrients and water) to sustain production and a coffee agroforestry model will estimate regulating services of greenhouse gas sequestration or emissions, and water balance and quality. The coffee agroforestry model will also generate estimates of the response of the different agri-systems to varying levels of inputs and climate conditions. These will be compared to farmer reported effects of climate and market variations and used to inform an economic sensitivity analysis of each production typology. Environmental footprints in terms of carbon, water and biodiversity will be calculated and assessed against those that would be provided by forest. These will then enable an analysis of economic and environmental trade-offs of "land-sharing" (more sustainable but lower productivity larger land area) and "land-sparing" (high productivity lower sustainability but release of land to forest) scenarios. Ultimately a Trade-off Model will be applied that integrates productive, environmental, social and economic data to assess the likely adoption of different agri-systems across a population of farmers under different market and climate conditions, and the economic and environmental outcomes. These results will inform the best strategies and support for farmers to enable sustainable productive livelihoods while meeting the product demands of markets and environmental demands of society.

There are competing scientific discourses in sustainable agricultural development. One is the need for sustainable intensification of agricultural production increasing productivity while maintaining ecosystem services. This aligns with the land-sparing hypothesis that, to maximise land for biodiversity and environment, productivity of existing agricultural land needs to be increased. Against this, the agroecology discourse promotes the use of ecological principals to sustain agricultural productivity with minimal use of external inputs seen as damaging to health and the environment, but also more resilient to climate variability. This may lead to less productive but more environmentally beneficial agriculture or a land-sharing modality. Coffee agri-systems present a good model to test the productive, economic, environmental and social trade-offs between different modalities of agricultural development. The research builds on a unique 20-year old coffee experiment contrasting monoculture and agroforestry under different inputs levels, expanding the comparisons to on-farm environmental and economic performance. The research brings together field measurements of productivity, use of light, water and nutrients with a coffee agroforestry model to assess carbon and water balance as well as productivity under different input and climate scenarios. The modelled outcomes will be used to conduct economic sensitivity analysis against climate and market variations. A trade-off model will be applied that integrates productive, economic, environmental and social parameters, and works with the variability in a population of farmers to assess the proportion of the population that will adopt sustainable or intensive practices, and the economic and environmental outcomes. Uniquely, we will apply this model across different market and climatic conditions to assess where sustainable or intensive production options provide greater resilience to these stresses.

Farmers face the challenge of meeting multiple demands of buyers and consumers for a product and from society to be environmentally sustainable; whilst themselves experiencing challenges of a changing climate and volatile markets that threaten their livelihoods. At the same time, there are contradictory signals from government on the one hand promoting intensification of production while on the other greater sustainability and reduced environmental impact. Coffee farmers in Central America represent a case in point. Previously farmers intensified production to increase productivity, but latterly, in response to variable markets and the impacts of climate variation, there has been a tendency to return to traditional coffee agroforestry. While there is reasonable evidence of the broader environmental benefits of coffee agroforestry, there is little evidence as to whether these systems are more environmentally resilient. The proposed research aims evaluate the supporting ecosystem processes that underpin sustainable coffee production, and the provisioning and regulating ecosystem service outcomes. But additionally to evaluate the resilience of those outcomes to market and climate variation across different coffee agri-systems. Another trade-off is that if coffee agroforestry is more resilient it may be less productive, requiring more area to produce a given amount of coffee. That generates an additional trade-off in occupying more land that might otherwise be forest, delivering a broader set of ecosystem services and biodiversity conservation measures. The results of these trade-off analyses will be shared with coffee sector stakeholders including the national coffee institutes in Costa Rica and Guatemala, who are supporting the proposal, and enable them to better inform their strategies for carbon neutral coffee production (Costa Rica) and to increase resilience to climate variations (Guatemala). Outside the sector, results will be shared by national partners with the national climate change action plan committees of each country in which they participate, and potentially contribute to the forthcoming IPCC impact report in which one of the Co-I is a co-author. There is substantial concern in the coffee commercial sector, and NGOs who work with them, on how to increase resilience of coffee producers but little evidence as to what is effective. The PI has worked with UK coffee companies and NGOs and will share the results to help inform what systems of production should contribute to increased resilience or at least what the economic and environmental trade-offs are in making those decisions for farmers livelihoods but also for security of supply to coffee roasters and consumers. Ultimately the results should inform the ongoing debate in forums such as the Food and Climate Research Network on whether agricultural development should intensify production and spare land for the environment or opt for more sustainable production system providing ecosystems services but with a bigger land coverage.