Coffee, anyone?

Or let's make some poor people even poorer

• EU is trying to limit deforestation by requiring that coffee and other commodities carry proof of no deforestation involved in production

• The process of collecting that proof is exorbitant for small coffee farmers

• It will also add costs for large producers

• It may necessitate the development of “segregated supply chains”

• As a result, the EUDR will make these commodities and all products made from them more expensive

In June last year, a landmark piece of legislation came into effect in the European Union. Dubbed the EU Deforestation Regulation, the piece in question will be implemented gradually over a period of 18 months, meaning it will be in full force at the end of this year.

It will also make several million African farmers already living in poverty even poorer because nothing is more important than climate change, even poverty, which happens to be one of the sustainable development goals of the UN. Funnily enough, so is deforestation.

First for some more fun facts. Did you know that Europe was the largest coffee market in the world? I didn’t. Europeans drink more than twice as much coffee as the whole of North America and also more than twice as much as South America. So much for stereotypes.

According to a Dutch government entity called the Centre for Promotion of Imports, Europe accounted for 32% of global coffee consumption back in 2021. But Europe is also the most climate-conscious continent on earth. Europe wants to reduce its global emissions footprint. To do this, Europe wants to make sure its coffee — and palm oil, and beef, and rubber, and leather, and, vegans beware, soy — only comes from responsible farmers who do not clear forests to grow their produce.

On the face of it, as usual, the goal is noble. We have all seen the horrible images of forests being burned down, along with the animals in them, to clear land for palm oil production. We have all heard horror stories about deforestation in the Amazon.

Preventing deforestation — and the associated loss of wildlife — is a good thing. Also as usual, however, in pursuit of its noble goal, the EU will cause suffering to those least deserving it: the small coffee farmers in Africa and Central America who account for 15% of the global market.

Most of the world’s — and Europe’s — coffee is produced by five countries. Brazil, Colombia, Vietnam, Honduras, and Indonesia account for 85% of global coffee production, according to statistics cited by Reuters. The remainder comes from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Peru, the collective Central America, and Mexico.

What’s more interesting, however, is that there are, in total, 12.5 million coffee farmers in the world. Of these, 9.6 million are the farmers who produce the 15% of global coffee outside the big five producing countries.

Now, global production for the current coffee year is projected at 171.4 million 60-kg bags because of course the standard measure for coffee must be different from everything else, thank you, Brazil. So, those 9.6 million small coffee farmers in Africa and Central America will roughly account for 25.7 million bags.

This amount happens to be equal to about half of Europe’s 2022/23 total coffee imports, which stood at an estimated 47.9 million bags, per the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Thanks to the Deforestation Regulation, those small farmers who, once again, depend on that single commodity for their livelihood, will be selling a lot less — if any — coffee to the world’s largest market. That should do wonders for their standard of living and, incidentally, for the end of deforestation.