Coffee, a growing crisis in Honduras.

According to the World Bank, Honduras remains one of the poorest and most unequal countries in the Western Hemisphere, with a quarter of its population living in extreme poverty even before the two big shocks of 2020: the COVID-19 pandemic and Category 4 hurricanes Eta and Iota. With little to fall back on, following years of low prices, many coffee farmers struggled to be resilient in the face of disaster and felt they had no choice but to migrate north.

Production is expected to fall another 3% in the current 2021/22 season, despite robust global demand and prices, industry data shows.

Today any signs of healthy coffee flowers in the high altitudes of Honduras is a precious sight for many smallholder farmers in the region who lost crops in the tumultuous storms.

Hand-picking coffee has been a way of life for centuries in poor, mountainous parts of Central America, in areas too steep, thin-soiled or forested to grow much else. The region produces about 15% of the world's arabica, the smooth-flavored beans favored over the rougher robusta by many coffee connoisseurs.

Yet the farmers and officials interviewed said that, with output still falling in Central America because of the resurgent Roya disease, making a living from farming coffee will remain a struggle.

Roya first broke out in the region in 2012, and by 2014, over half of the coffee crops had been affected, before it was largely brought under control.

Eugenio Bonilla, a 56-year-old coffee farmer from El Laurel and brother of Maria, said his production nearly halved in the 2020/21 season, mostly because of Roya.

"It's useless that coffee prices have been improving if the trees are not in good condition," he said.

Their margins are razor-thin, with around half the global coffee price going to middlemen.

When world coffee prices averaged $1.41 per lb in 2019/20, for example, Bonilla said he and his fellow farmers received just 15 lempiras ($0.6238) per lb of coffee that cost them around 20 lempiras ($0.8317) to produce.

"When coffee is not doing well, that's when you see big migrations from Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua," said René León-Gómez, executive secretary of PROMECAFE, a regional research network formed by the national coffee institutes of Central America.

Honduran coffee farmers hope for a brighter future.

Honduran coffee farmers in the region have suffered a lot of damage from drought to flooding and increased humidity that allows disease to spread, and cooperatives are helping her to combat this and get the best from her farm.

The laboratory and training facilities are also made available to other organizations interested in taking part in the programme which awards diploma qualifications, thereby extending their reach beyond Fairtrade certified groups.

Let us hope the coffee industry comes together to support coffee producers around the globe.

Re-evaluating sourcing, procurement and looking at what we can do as a responsible business to push for more equitable and strong supply chains tackles a key driver of poverty and increases people’s resilience to the climate shocks they’re suffering more frequently.

Let’s drink coffee to that.