Coffee Rust Threatens Latin American Crop; 150 Years Ago, It Wiped Out An Empire.

Coffee rust has no cure.

Five years ago, Finca El Valle, a small, family-run coffee farm south of Antigua, Guatemala, was producing 140,000 pounds of superior-quality Arabica for a select handful of America's premier specialty-coffee roasters.

An outbreak of coffee leaf rust, caused by the fungus Hemileia vastatrix, hit the celebrated coffee-producing region in 2012, and by 2014 it had infected the entire farm. That year El Valle harvested a meager 28,000 pounds of coffee, an 80 percent drop. The next harvests were even smaller. With the lowest coffee prices in a dozen years, reviving the farm has been deeply challenging.

"We are in the middle of the biggest coffee crisis of our time," said the Guatemalan producer and exporter Josué Morales, who works with over 1,300 growers.

Central America, where smallholders produce 80 percent of the region's coffee, has been particularly hard hit by rust. Some 70 percent of the farms have been affected, and over 1.7 million coffee workers have lost their jobs. Many are leaving the coffee lands to find work elsewhere.

Full article at:

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/10/16/649155664/coffee-rust-threatens-latin-american-crop-150-years-ago-it-wiped-out-an-empire?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=2044&fbclid=IwAR3yjcJg0ByGevjWpBXWvHf9YrT1HFaMvn4ro3tuJmZd_DWl0bW514ajuBQ