The Impact of Coffee

The impact of coffee on developing countries can be both good or bad. The West is pressuring their governments to invest into cash crops rather than food production, and perhaps that makes sense, as equatorial countries aren't great for growing food: the sunlight actually slows photosynthesis, as it' s inefficient at high temperatures. They're also unsuitable for fields, as these are vulnerable to droughts: to retain moisture they require forests, and agriculture should therefore be based on forestry. Perhap we can't expect them to grow all their own food, as it would require too much deforestation.
If shade-grown, cash crops like coffee and cacao can therefore help preserve forest in developing countries even while allowing them to develop. These are countries must become more developed to get out of poverty, so they need an influx of cash, and they can't become developed in the same way as temperate countries without running the risk of turning into deserts, especially in view of climate change.
We were wrong in our neocolonial way of trying to make developing countries like the countries that are already developed, because they're in a totally different environment and must therefore be developed in a totally different way, based on a forestry model rather than a field model. In this way, we can deal with both deforestation AND poverty at the same time, and humans and nature can coexist sustainably.
There may be more advantages to forestry we don't know yet, even if it also has disadvantages. We developed strains of coffee that were sun-resistant because we were used to growing crops in the sun, but perhaps we could find ways to make coffee fungus-resistant instead?

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