As the world awakens to its morning cup, a sobering new report lays bare a bitter truth: the global coffee boom is carving deep scars into the planet’s forests. Titled Wake Up and Smell the Deforestation: Coffee’s Destruction of Brazilian Forests and its Future, the study spotlights Brazil, where sprawling plantations have devoured vast swaths of the Amazon rainforest, turning emerald canopies into sun-baked monocrops.
But the wake-up call extends far beyond South America’s borders, echoing urgently in Africa’s coffee heartlands like Kenya, where smallholder farmers grapple with similar pressures amid a global push for sustainability.
The report, drawing on satellite data and field investigations, reveals that coffee cultivation has contributed to the loss of over 1.2 million hectares of Brazilian forest since 2000, much of it in the biodiverse Cerrado and Amazon regions.
“Coffee isn’t just a crop; it’s a deforestation driver disguised as a daily delight,” warns lead author Dr. Maria Silva, an ecologist at the Brazilian Institute for Environmental Research. “In Brazil, we have seen farms expand unchecked, fueled by international demand, leading to soil erosion, biodiversity collapse, and carbon emissions that rival entire industries.”
The findings confirm the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) freshly released Global Forest Resources Assessment 2025, which notes that while global deforestation rates have slowed to 10.9 million hectares annually, down from 17.6 million in the 1990s, agriculture remains the prime culprit, accounting for nearly 90% of losses.
Coffee, alongside soy and cattle ranching, features prominently in this tally, with the FAO emphasizing that “large-scale and small-scale farming” drive much of the destruction.
In Brazil, where coffee covers over 2.2 million hectares, the report estimates that expanding arabica and robusta fields could push annual losses toward 200,000 hectares if unchecked, exacerbating climate feedback loops like intensified droughts and wildfires.
Yet, as Brazilian monocultures gobble up forests, the ripple effects are felt also in Africa, where coffee is both a lifeline and a liability. Kenya, Africa’s third-largest coffee producer after Ethiopia and Uganda, exemplifies the continent’s precarious balance. Here, over 800,000 smallholder farmers, many tending plots smaller than two hectares cultivate premium arabica beans in the Kenyan highlands. These regions, once cloaked in indigenous forests, now face dual threats: the indirect fallout from global coffee price volatility and the direct temptation to clear more land for survival.
Between 1990 and 2020, Kenya’s coffee acreage shrank by 30%, from 170,000 to 119,000 hectares, as aging trees succumbed to pests, erratic rains, and rock-bottom prices. But the FAO’s 2025 assessment paints a starker picture for East Africa: while continental deforestation dipped between 2020 and 2022, coffee zones like Kenya’s Central Highlands lost 12% of agricultural biodiversity in recent years, linked to forest clearance for expanded farming and fuelwood harvesting.
Climate models in the FAO report project that by 2050, up to 90% of Kenya’s prime coffee lands could become unsuitable due to warming temperatures and shifting rains, effects amplified by deforestation’s role in local microclimates.
A recent study by the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT warns that without intervention, Kenyan farmers might expand into protected forests for higher yields, clashing with the government’s 10% forest cover target by 2030 and risking bans under the European Union’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).
The EUDR, set to fully enforce in 2025, mandates “deforestation-free” imports, potentially sidelining African smallholders who lack resources to trace supply chains.
Across Africa, the pattern repeats: In Ethiopia, coffee’s birthplace, wild arabica forests are vanishing at rates tied to commercialization; in Uganda and Tanzania, small farms encroach on woodlands to offset low productivity, which hovers at just 2-3 kilograms of cherry per tree in Kenya versus a potential of 30.
The Wake Up and Smell the Deforestation report calls for a “regenerative pivot,” advocating agroforestry systems where coffee thrives under native shade trees, boosting yields by 20-30% while sequestering carbon.
In Kenya, initiatives like the Rainforest Alliance’s Clean Household Energy Solutions are transforming coffee husks into smokeless briquettes, slashing firewood use by 40% in Mount Kenya communities and curbing deforestation-driven pollution.
Fairtrade programs in Kericho and Machakos have trained over 70% of participants in climate-smart practices, yielding 28% higher outputs and planting shade trees to mimic natural forests.
The FAO urges governments to “decouple deforestation from agriculture” through incentives for smallholders such as subsidies for shade-grown coffee, access to finance, and youth training to stem rural exodus.
