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Economic value is not always apparent. One kilogram
of Ethiopian coffee, some of the finest in the
world, has a defined price and can easily be brought
to market and exchanged for hard currency.
What is lost in the process of producing that
coffee, though, is potentially more valuable in the
long-run, but is less obvious. In the great push to
increase yields of the country's leading export
commodity, the very source of the value of the
roaring specialty coffee sector is the vast mountain
forests - and they are disappearing.
The genetically diverse gene pool of wild Coffea
Arabica populations is hidden in the underbrush
of Ethiopia's rapidly vanishing forests. A diverse
generic variety of coffee plants has many values.
Currently, the vast majority of most commercial
coffee production originates from a limited numbers
of accessions from forests. Unfortunately, this
uniformity produces plants quite susceptible to
future pests and disease that are classically quick
to adapt to natural and applied deterrents,
destroying valuable harvests.
While pesticides and insecticides may be used in the
short-run, they quickly become ineffective as
immunities develop in the pests they attempt to
protect the plants from, not to mention the added
input cost to production or potential negative side
effects to neighbouring crops, soil and drinking
water supplies. Application of chemicals also may
lower the prices Ethiopian coffee fetches as organic
products fetch substantially higher prices.
The natural solution to the danger is rapidly
disappearing. A rich wild coffee population exists
in the underbrush of Ethiopian mountain forests that
contain important genetic information that should be
preserved and explored in breeding programmes. The
potential benefits include the above-mentioned
disease and pest immunity, high-yielding varieties
as well as low caffeine specie that can capture the
decaf market without the high costs associated with
the decaffeination process.
Sadly, these prospective benefits will be lost
forever if current trends persist as around 15pc of
Ethiopia's forests have been felled in the last 15
years alone. This leaves about only three per cent
of the land mass covered with closed forest,
protecting the valuable wild coffee.
It is not as if a directed, well-resourced and
organised project could be launched to pick a few
coffee berries and bring them to the lab, leaving
the forest to waste. Coffee germination potential is
only two months and cryo-preservation is difficult
and expensive. What is rather necessary is in-site
conservation.
But why would forests be disappearing so rapidly if
they contain such high values?
The answer lies in the current land regime which
provides a short time horizon incentive structure
such that it is economically rational for farmers to
cut down these forests. Laying aside the
under-resourced and undefined protection efforts
that do exist, the fact that government owns all
land in Ethiopia indirectly incites farmers to
deforest in an effort to put more land under
cultivation and destroy valuable wild coffee genes
forever.
Once agricultural land becomes unproductive or
scarce - due to droughts, overly intensive
production or population pressure - it is cheaper
for a farmer to convert forest land into
agricultural plots instead of investing into the
maintenance of the existing land's productivity.
The individual farmer, however, is not to blame as
he is motivated by immediate subsistence needs and
cannot be made to bear the brunt of the social costs
to forest loss and be expected to preserve at little
or no economic gain. The attraction of a one-time
timber sale and increased land on which to sow crops
is far more attractive than saving trees.
It does not have to be so, though.
Public landownership provides little or no incentive
to long-term investments on unsecured land.
Moreover, it creates a situation where the land
cannot be used as collateral for receiving bank
credit to fund such investments.
If land were privatised it would ease the current
situation where plot sizes continually diminish as
land is divided between offspring in the only legal
way to transfer its inheritance.
However, land ownership is not all that needs to be
changed. The current preservation system is
glaringly insufficient as under-funded projects
suffer from non-committed officials and deviations
from the goal.
The costs for the country and the world at large as
forests are cut are much greater than lost coffee
plants. When land is degraded, the cohesive root
system is lost and soil is eroded and the ability of
land to hold water is diminished. In a country with
variable rainfall over space and time and with
sky-rocketing fertiliser prices, that is bad news.
The spices, medicinal plants - some known, some yet
discovered - and forest honey potential are also
lost with deforestation. If a forest management
system is instituted, timber, as well as others such
as such as gesho, desha, and ensuleta, all valuable
for local products, can be sustainably extracted.
The loss of these resources will continue if
resettlement programmes are not stopped and the land
tenure system is not altered, or population pressure
is not eased through education and family planning.
Moreover, labelling or product certification
programmes can help raise the economic values of
these products.
However, until the government becomes serious about
conservation, these hidden but valuable resources
will be lost forever.
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