By Tim Johnson, McClatchy Foreign Staff
June 02, 2013
SAN
PEDRO YEPOCAPA, Guatemala -- Across Central America, even as rains arrive, many
coffee plantations contain only spindly, nearly defoliated bushes, the result of
a blight known as coffee leaf rust whose devastation, so far, has yet to affect
the prices of premium highland coffee that baristas serve around the developed
world.
But
while Americans have yet to feel its effects, the blight may soon prove to be
as disastrous as any earthquake or volcanic eruption to afflict Central
America. Already, it’s knocked nearly half a million people out of work and
driven up crime. And the crisis is only beginning. It may soon send a stream of
new migrants toward the United States, speed up deforestation and invigorate
illicit narcotics production.
It
also serves as a bellwether on climate change, which appears to be causing
temperatures to rise, taking plagues and infestations to higher elevations that
once were considered too cool and dry for the rust fungus.
At
the San Pedrana Cooperative on the flanks of the Fuego Volcano southwest of
Guatemala City, this country’s capital, Miguel Angel Xia turned over a leaf to
display the orange, dust-like fungus that sucks nourishing sap from coffee
leaves, killing the bushes.
“Rust
has been around for 30 years,” Xia said. “But it was always at 3,000 feet or
below. And now, it’s up to 5,000 feet. It never would’ve been this high
before.”
“No
one imagined that it could thrive in that environment and go airborne,” said
Christian Wolthers, a past president of the Specialty Coffee Association of
America who imports green coffee from his base in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Coffee
rust has changed history in centuries past. The fungus blighted crops in the
British colony of Ceylon in the 1870s, decimating coffee exports to London and
helping turn the British into a nation of tea drinkers.
Since
then, fungicides have kept coffee rust under control when it reappears.
But
this time is different, experts say. The aggressive outbreak has extended to
more than 70 percent of coffee bushes in Guatemala and El Salvador, 64 percent
in Costa Rica, and lesser amounts in Nicaragua and Honduras, according to a May
13 report by the International Coffee Organization. Regional coffee production
fell 17.1 percent in the past October-to-March season, and it is likely to fall
30 percent to 40 percent in the coming season, which begins in October.
In
Central America, with a total population of 41 million, nearly 1 million seasonal
and permanent coffee workers are expected to lose their jobs next season.
“Each
of these jobs are providing for six people. You do the math,” said Maja
Wallengren, an independent coffee analyst based in Mexico City who predicts
that the disruption to families will be far greater than just the economic
costs. “It’s not something you can get under control in a year.”
Other
agricultural sectors, such as sugar and palm oil, cannot pick up the slack from
unemployed coffee workers, and since devastated coffee farms are often
clustered together, pockets of unemployment soar.
“You’re
going to see a lot of migration,” said Alejandro Keller, who is the fourth
generation of his family to grow coffee at the Finca Santa Isabel, a large
organic farm an hour’s drive from Guatemala City.