Abstract
Climate variability is recognized as one of the greatest challenges of our world today and is predicted to have further adverse impacts on coffee production. Specific to Africa, Ethiopia is the leading coffee producer on the continent and is ranked 10th in global coffee export rankings; its coffee production is extremely sensitive to climate change, threatening the country's economy. This study was designed to assess the impact of climatic change and variability on smallholder farmers' coffee production in the Mattu district in southwest Ethiopia. Relevant secondary data from the Ethiopian national meteorology agency and the district agricultural office. The study shows the mean annual temperature in the district as 19.67°C over the past 32 years (1990-2022), and an increasing upward trend by a factor of 0.014°C per year and 0.14°C per decade. The mean total rainfall in the Mattu district over the same 32-year period was 1,408.6 mm, and the mean annual rainfall was 117.38 mm. The rainfall temporal pattern shows a decreasing trend over this period by a factor of 24.23 mm annually and 242.3 mm per decade. The district coffee production data confirm that temperature variability significantly affects coffee production at P<0.05. Given these trends, all stakeholders should further build and empower the ongoing community traditional and conventional natural resources management, and the government and related NGOs need to initiate policies, projects, strategies (including transformative new adaptation and mitigation strategies), and incentives that can assist smallholder farmers in sustainable coffee production.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
