| REPORT |
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| Year : 2009 | Volume
: 7
| Issue : 2 | Page : 141-144 |
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Measuring and Managing the Environmental Cost of Coffee Production in Latin America
Victor Julio Chavez Arce1, Raul Raudales2, Rich Trubey2, David I King3, Richard B Chandler4, Carlin C Chandler4
1 Cooperative Montes de Oro and MDI/Montes de Oro Research and Training Center Mirimar, Costa Rica
2 Mesoamerican Development Institute, Lowell, MA, USA
3 Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Amherst, MA, USA
4 Department of Natural Resources Conservation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA, USA
Correspondence Address:
David I King
Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, Amherst, MA
USA
 Source of Support: None, Conflict of Interest: None  | Check |
DOI: 10.4103/0972-4923.58645
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Coffee is a major international commodity, and because of this, coffee production has the potential for considerable global impacts on the environment. These impacts can include the consumption of energy, water, land and the loss of native forest. Here we quantify these costs using Costa Rica as a case study, and describe an initiative undertaken at the Montes de Oro Cooperative in which these impacts are reduced substantially through the development and application of alternative technologies. We show how these processes reduce the consumption of resources, and also reduce economic costs to the farmer, thus providing a market-based incentive for conservation. The initiatives undertaken at Montes de Oro can provide a model for the future, for reducing the environmental costs of coffee production, while simultaneously improving the economic conditions of the people in coffee producing regions. |
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