Coffee leaf rust and smallholder farmers in Guatemala: livelihood impacts, migration and other coping strategies

Abstract

Changing climatic conditions are increasingly leading to new and more severe disease outbreaks, decimating agricultural production and significantly affecting rural livelihood systems. As shifting environmental conditions drive the expansion of agricultural diseases into regions where their impact has previously been limited, farmers must adopt coping strategies to face the impacts that these threats cause for household well-being and regional economic systems. Using data from 144 smallholder coffee farmer household surveys and key informant interviews, I studied how the Coffee Leaf Rust fungus (H. vastatrix; CLR) impacted farmers in eastern Guatemala between 2007 and 2016. I asked the following questions. 1) How were coffee fields and household well-being impacted over-time by CLR? 2) Did affected households migrate domestically or internationally as a result of CLR impact? 3) What non-migration strategies did households use to cope with CLR impacts? 4) What related changes in cropping regimes and agricultural hiring occurred among affected households as a result of CLR? I found that 7-88% of households were affected by CLR per year between 2007 and 2016 and affected households lost an average of 49-73% of their coffee crop per year due to CLR. Crop losses translated into decreased household income, employment, food security, ability to pay debts, and ability to send children to school. Based on coffee farmer debt structures, CLR coffee crop loss led to a regional economic depression and shifts in the formal and informal loan industries. Households sold land, borrowed money, stopped renting land, replanted their coffee fields, shifted crop land use, and decreased on-farm hiring. CLR-induced migration effectively doubled the volume of migrants from study communities domestically and to the United States and turned non-migrant communities into migrant communities. The dynamics described here are not limited to only the communities or Guatemalan region studied. Globalized agricultural commodity production comes with inherent vulnerabilities for smallholder farmers that can be exacerbated by environmental shifts. This research helps to illustrate the ways in which a commodity crop agricultural collapse can manifest for smallholder households, with subsequent behavioral strategies that can ripple into larger domestic and international phenomena outside of the immediately affected region.