Climate Change Threat to Coffee Production in Indonesia

Your task is to write a report for the Ministry of Agriculture identifying the most significant threat to future coffee production in your assigned country. After describing this threat, you will name and describe an existing solution. Your solution should relate to the topics we’ve covered in the different modules: coffee’s ecology and genetics, economics and marketing, sustainability, international development, or research and extension. Discussion of the solution must include description and analysis of one existing, coffee-related policy, project, or initiative that an agency, organization or business is implementing related to your solution. Note that your paper should engage with concepts and themes from at least two different modules. You shouldn’t have a paper that only talks about agroforestry or is all economics.
Audience
Each country has a Ministry of Agriculture--a department in charge of agricultural policies and regulations. For this assignment, imagine that you are working as a research consultant in your assigned country and that the Ministry is re-evaluating their policy and funding for the coffee sector. They have requested an assessment of threats to coffee within the country as well as ways to address these threats. The officials who will read this report are not coffee experts, and it is not safe to assume they know details about the cultivation, economic conditions, or social implications of growing coffee.
Recommended Structure
Your report should have two main sections: part one should focus on the threat and part two on the solution. Demonstrating how your solution addresses each of your points about the threat will ensure a strong, cohesive argument.
A recommended structure is:
Briefly provide background on coffee production in your assigned country before concluding your introductory paragraph with your thesis statement (see next section).
Decide on the 2 or 3 points the Ministry absolutely needs to know about the threat. Write 1-2 body paragraphs on each of these points. Support your points with evidence. This should include definitions of key terms, quotations from or paraphrasing of key sources, and an explanation of how these sources support your argument.
Provide a description of your chosen solution along with 2 or 3 points the Ministry should know about the solution before taking action. Write 1-2 body paragraphs on each of these points.
Your discussion of the solution should use one specific, coffee-related, project, policy, or initiative as evidence. You can discuss the project throughout the second half of your essay to explain your main points, or you can describe and analyze the project in a separate paragraph in part two of your essay.
Summarize your paper with a conclusion that includes a restatement of your thesis.
Thesis: As with all of your writing assignments in this course, this is a thesis-driven paper. You should update the draft thesis statement you have been working on in past assignments based on TA feedback and your continued research. Since there are two major sections, your paper will have a compound thesis of 2 to 3 sentences that answers both of the following questions:
1) What is the most significant threat to coffee production in your assigned country of origin?
2) What is an existing coffee-related solution that can alleviate or address this threat?
You will support your answer to each question with 2 to 3 points. This means your thesis will include two blueprints of reasons, one for the threat portion of your essay and one for your discussion of a solution. If you would like more guidance in developing a strong thesis statement, please come to a TA’s office hours. They will be happy to work with you. Some examples of sample thesis statements can be found in this document.
Part 1: Threat to production
In this section of your paper, you will describe the most significant threat to coffee production in your assigned country. A threat is a set of circumstances likely to reduce or eliminate coffee production, thereby threatening the livelihoods of coffee producers and their families. Please note, if you select climate change as a threat, you MUST identify a specific impact of climate change (i.e. changing temperatures, rainfall patterns, etc.) on coffee production systems. You cannot write about the broad impacts of climate change as your threat.
Examples of threats include:
Rising temperatures that are making a particular region less suitable for coffee production;
An increase in the occurrence of pests and diseases;
A current “C” price that does not cover the cost of production, contributing to poverty and food insecurity at the producer level; or
Government policies that underfund agricultural extension programs, leaving farmers ill-equipped to respond to outbreaks of coffee leaf rust.
You will present the 2 to 3 most important points to understand about this threat based on your understanding of the historical, biophysical, economic and/or sociocultural context of your assigned country. These points can explain how the threat became so significant, its impact on the country, or evidence for why it is more important than other threats to coffee production.
Part 2: Assessment of Solutions
In the second part of your paper, you will name and describe one existing solution that can address or alleviate your chosen threat. This solution should relate to the topics we have studied in the course: coffee ecology and genetics, economics and marketing, sustainability, international development, or coffee research and extension. To ensure that your solution is realistic, you must use an existing, coffee-related project, policy, or initiative as part of your evidence. This project can be a good example of your solution in action, or it can be a bad example that your solution could help fix . This project, policy, or initiative can come from a farmer cooperative, research institution, government agency, private company, or non-profit organization. It should take place on coffee farms or directly benefit coffee farmers. Examples of projects, policies, or initiatives include the following:
A development agency providing microloans to farmers in Ethiopia;
A private company in Mexico donating shade trees to mitigate the effects of climate change
The government of Brazil investing in a digital extension program for farmers; or
Vietnam implementing a new series of regulations that monitor water use and fertilizer leaching
If you choose a project not currently taking place in your assigned country, you must provide evidence for how it would work in your assigned country based on your country’s ecology, history, economy, and culture.