A study case on coffee (Coffea arabica): Limu Coffe - IRD

The geographical indication paradox
Do economy and ecology are compatible in the GI framework? As Stellmacher noted
(2007), in forest coffee certification, the main objective is the economic one to increase
farmers’ income through the selling and exporting of their products. Accordingly, they
foremost try to produce larger quantities of forest coffee and to obtain higher prices. This is
likely to have negative impacts on the forest since yields can not be expanded beyond limited
thresholds without degrading its natural habitat. Higher prices provide an incentive to produce
more forest coffee by increased forest management at the expense of the forest ecosystem and
biodiversity. Indeed primary forests would turn to secondary, tertiary, etc. forests and species
of former forests would tend to disappear. The coffee forest landscape will tend to
homogeneity with selected shade trees as Acacia, Albizia, Cordia, Croton and Ficus species
while the other trees will be cut. The organization of these forests will be divided into two or
three stratums. This phenomenon is already observable in Limu Kosa and surrounding
woredas, and progressively spreads since the socialist government through extension
programmes where farmers constitute a dispatched pioneer front, daily transforming primary
forest in secondary forest. While farmers are colonising the forest borders, investors are
clearing more deeply in these forests as it is in Debacon forest of Caffee Ilfataa and Gaallee
Jimaate kebeles in Limu Kosa.
Debacon forest presents the same structure that characterized non exploited forests as
protected Babiya Folla forest (including Kebena forest). That means dense vegetation
distributed in several stratums: an inferior stratum made of weeds species up to 2 meters high,
a shrubby stratum mainly made of coffee trees in forest borders, a medium stratum from 5 to
15 meters high, and then a superior stratum including species as Kararo trees (up to 30 meters
high) characterizing south western Ethiopian forests. The recent development of investors
threatens this structure: some plots 100 meters long and 30 meters wide are cleared in the
middle of the forest. All stratums are cut down, and some trees of middle and superior
stratums are maintained for shade purpose while temporary shades as Sesbania species are
row planted with coffee seedlings. Debacon forest divided into eleven investors is step by step
normalized and transformed as a common coffee agro-forest landscape.
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