‘It used to be a farm – now it’s a mall’: how El Salvador’s crisis-hit coffee producers are trying to adapt

The new highway has taken chunks out of Ines Ortiz’s coffee farm but the land lost to the Los Chorros Megaproject , El Salvador’s largest-ever infrastructure scheme, is only the latest crisis faced by growers in Central America’s smallest country, who have survived deforestation, civil war, climate change, falling prices for their beans, and infestations of rust disease in recent decades.

A former head of natural resources at the agriculture ministry, Ortiz, 72, still cannot believe what she sees on her farm of shade-grown coffee plants in the hills spreading from the San Salvador volcano. The farmed forest lost to the $410m ($300m) highway graphically illustrate how the government’s construction boom and deforestation have hit the coffee industry.

El Salvador no longer exports much coffee as it grapples with climate breakdown, labour emigration and controversial public policies. To stem the industry’s decline, a new generation of growers, with more women taking the lead, is trying to pivot towards producing more high-quality coffee.

The coffee industry was the engine of El Salvador’s economy last century, responsible for up to 40% of export earnings until the 1990s . During that time, the sector drove modernisation of the country’s infrastructure. But over the past 20 years, coffee exports fell 65% , according to the new Salvadorian Coffee Institute, the industry body, which is funded by taxes on coffee exports.

The industry, which had struggled since the country’s civil war (1979-92), plunged deeper into crisis after 2012, when an outbreak of leaf-rust fungus – known as la roya – combined with deforestation and rising average temperatures and humidity, devastated plantations. Between 2012 and 2014, annual production fell by 60% to half a million 60kg bags a year – far from the record set in 1974-75, when the country produced 3.8m bags .

“Coffee rust is like Covid; it’s everywhere in the air,” says Karla Boza, a San Salvadorian coffee producer. “The best way to defend against it is to be healthy, stay nourished and keep your immune system up.”

After the leaf-rust epidemic, customers in countries such as the US bought less Salvadorian coffee, making the industry’s recovery harder. Although production rose slightly in 2022-23, the decline has continued; while more than 150,000 people were once employed, there were only 37,000 jobs by 2020, reflecting the lack of investment and growing global competition.

The devastation wrought by leaf rust, worsened by a warmer climate, has prompted the industry organisation World Coffee Research (WCR) to study the Salvadorian crop’s resilience on a small farm near Santa Ana, where it looks for better and safer ways to grow beans. Many producers partly blame the government’s closure of the old coffee institute after the leaf-rust outbreak for the industry’s struggles.

Vern Long, chief executive of WCR, says El Salvador’s industry lacks the national support that enabled Honduras and Guatemala – which have been hit almost as badly by the same factors as El Salvador – to recover.

“We have to think differently,” says Long, speaking in Chicago. “The investment gap is severe. And the ability to respond and adapt to the climate crisis is a question of investment and innovation.”

On top of the continual battle against the fungus, which pushes farmers higher up the slopes of El Salvador’s 20 volcanoes in search of cooler temperatures, farms compete for labour as coffee’s infrequent harvest cycle cannot sustain many permanent jobs.

Nearly 20% of coffee farmers also need other work and labour shortages are seriously affecting coffee productivity, says Byron Reyes, an agricultural economist working in the region.

As extreme weather in Central America’s northern triangle propels regional climate migration , about a quarter of all Salvadorians, mostly men, now live abroad , according to the US Agency for International Development.

The lure of jobs in the armed services construction and tourism has also depleted the workforce on coffee farms. As employers compete for workers, wages have risen in El Salvador’s dollarised economy, which has been boosted by a recent influx of foreigners after President Bukele’s continuing crackdown on gangs – an openly authoritarian policy that is spreading throughout Latin America. The resulting feeling of greater security has attracted tourists and more foreign currency.

However, even if most coffee producers welcome the reduction in violence, despite the government’s harsh methods and abuses during more than two years of a state of emergency, they say the crackdown has – by boosting tourism – inflated labour costs.

[The crisis] is not something we are doing wrong. It’s something that happens to us

Karla Boza

Yet another challenge for Salvadorian coffee producers is the EU’s new deforestation regulation , due to come into force later this year. It will require any farmer exporting coffee to the EU to prove that neither their farm nor their supply chain involves land deforested after 2020, legally or illegally.

El Salvador’s coffee industry, which research suggests could be hit harder than any other country in the world, with a predicted loss of more than a third of suitable land by 2050, claims it is not responsible for the fall of 85% in the country’s forest cover since the 1960s. It is the second-most deforested country in the Americas after Haiti.

According to David Browning, of Enveritas , a nonprofit organisation working to improve sustainability in the coffee and cocoa industries, there are few examples in El Salvador where deforestation has been due to coffee farms.

So, the EU regulation has met with frustration by coffee producers in the country, who say it is a policy made by “people in Brussels” who know nothing about the constraints faced by remote farms.

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As coffee farms dwindle across El Salvador, what is left of the industry is changing rapidly. As men increasingly emigrate, more farms are being run by women, according to the Women’s Coffee Alliance of El Salvador (AMCES) .

Browning says women own about 25% of coffee farms but Lily Pacas, who worked at the coffee institute and agriculture ministry, says the number is probably much higher but not represented in data because most Salvadorian land, whether managed by women or not, remains in men’s names.

As their influence grows across the sector, women are looking for ways out of the crisis. Maria Pacas, an AMCES board member whose mill processes coffee from Boza’s family farm, says diversification is one solution.

Pacas sees an opportunity in the growth of tourism to broaden her sources of income. In the mountains, where farms once spilled into each other and mist lingers late into the morning near the Jayaque volcano, birding tourism is now thriving.

Boza, 31, whose coffee won awards over the last decade, recently quit the family farm where she worked alongside her 74-year-old father to open a cafe in the capital’s restaurant-filled San Benito neighbourhood.

“It’s crazy that I’m barely 30 years old and I can already say: ‘I would go through here to school,’” she says. “It used to be a coffee farm, but now it’s a shopping mall.”

The difficulties of working with family and the climate crisis are reasons Boza left the farm for Jacinta, her intimate cafe dedicated to coffee roasted and produced by women.

“It’s very hard to combat things that are out of your hands,” Boza says. “We can plant trees, take care of the environment, do all these things, but nothing more can be done on the farm. [The crisis] is not something we are doing wrong – it’s something that happens to us.”

Related: The vanishing mangroves of El Salvador: ‘All our efforts may only slow the destruction’

In San Salvador, opinions differ on the future of coffee in the country. Miguel Araujo, a former environment minister who once farmed 15 hectares in the Bálsamo range, says the “sad story” is not the end of the line for coffee in El Salvador. He believes the industry still has potential if it focuses on quality over quantity.

However, Long, of the WCR, sees the lack of succession from one generation to the next on family farms as part of the problem.

But she does not blame producers for seeking other careers. “Why would you do something that’s not a good deal?” she asks. “Coffee is just really far behind. Of course, you are going to leave the farm. What a drag to stay.”