Climate Change a Factor for Coffee Rust in Mexico Frederic Saliba - Guardian UK
go to original March 27, 2013

See the devastating damages that coffee leaf rust causes in Caturra coffee trees. This is a farm in San Agustin, Colombia. (Alejandro Cadena)

Finca Hamburgo, at 1,250 metres above sea level, commands an uninterrupted view of 280 hectares of coffee plantations covering the verdant slopes of Tacana, a volcano in Chiapas state, southern Mexico. The damp heat there, close to the border with Guatemala, is ideal for growing Arabica coffee. But coffee rust – a disease caused by the Hemileia vastatrix fungus that spreads orange dust on to the leaves of coffee bushes – has infected the plantation, which has been operating for 125 years at Tapachula.

Jorge Perez, 20, sporting a red bandana, is hacking at infected bushes with a machete. "Dried out by the rust [roya in Spanish] almost all the leaves fall off," he explains. Employed on the farm as a day-labourer he and his wife crossed the border from Guatemala with a child of two to earn around $6.50 a day. Nearly half Hamburgo's plantations are affected by the loss of leaves.

According to farm manager Gustavo Salazar, who was the first to raise the alarm in October 2012, the infected bushes won't produce any fruit this year. "It's better to cut them back to strengthen them," he says. "Our previous crop, from September to February, did not suffer too much, but the next one could be 70% lower."

The fungus bleaches the leaves, preventing them from breathing. Arabica, the species most prone to rust, accounts for 97% of Mexico's 680,000 hectares of coffee plantations. "Here in Chiapas we have gone from 3,000 hectares infected in November to 45,000 now," says Ricardo Trampe, the head of the Tacana Regional Coffee Producers' Federation. Coffee growers in the western state of Veracruz, the second-largest production area in Mexico after Chiapas, reported the appearance of the dreaded fungus at the end of February.

Read the rest at Guardian UK

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