We are pleased to share with you the release of a new scientific paper by Dr. Paul Robbins, Vaishnavi Tripuraneni (University of Wisconsin), Dr. Krithi K. Karanth (Centre for Wildlife Studies) and Dr. Ashwini Chhatre (Indian School of Business).
The study titled Coffee, trees, and labor: Political economy of biodiversity in commodity agroforests was published in the journal, Annals of the American Association of Geographers, in September 2020.
The study conducted across Chikmagalur, Hassan and Kodagu districts in Karnataka’s Western Ghats evaluates sustaining wildlife in coffee plantations by evaluating labour scarcity, landholding size and coffee varieties.
More than 300 coffee farm owners were surveyed during the study. Results of the survey found that larger farm size, recent increase in canopy density, and the cultivation of Coffea arabica varieties, all encourage tree species diversity necessary for sustaining wildlife and habitats. However, these conditions are more labour and pesticide intensive, and encourage management practices that adversely impact biodiversity.
You can access the Paper in PDF format here.
