However if the timing and controls on hot moments are unknown or sporadic, less frequent sampling may significantly underestimate N2O emissions . Our results suggest that roughly 8,000 randomized individual chamber flux measurements would be needed to accurately estimate annual N2O budgets from these agricultural peat lands with a 95% confidence interval and 10% margin of error, assuming the drivers of hot moments were not well understood. Approximately 500 individual measurements would yield a 50% margin of error. Given the more sporadic nature of CH4 hot moments, our results suggest that it is even more difficult to accurately estimate CH4 fluxes with periodic sampling in these ecosystems. Analyses found that at least 17,000 and 2,500 individual flux measurements would be needed to estimate annual CH4 budgets within a 10% and 50% margin of error, respectively. The agricultural maize peat land soil studied here was a much larger source of soil GHG emissions than other maize agroecosystems. While agricultural peat soils are highly productive, average annual GHG emissions were 3.6-33.3 times greater on an area-scaled basis and 3-15.6 times greater on yield-scaled basis relative to other agricultural maize emissions estimates. We conducted an upscaling exercise as a first approximation of the potential impacts of maize peat land fluxes on regional GHG budgets. Our estimates suggested that maize agriculture on similar peat soils in the region could emit an average of 1.86 Tg CO2e y-1 .This value is significantly higher than previous estimates for the region and highlights the importance of including high frequency N2O measurements to capture hot moments in N2O fluxes,plastic pots 30 liters the disproportionate impact N2O emissions have on agricultural peat land GHG budgets, and that these agricultural peat lands are significant N2O sources.

We also found that irrigation timing and duration, not fertilization, was the predominant driver of N2O and CH4 emissions and a significant source of the total GHG budget. Determining management strategies that reduce soil N2O and CH4 emissions, particularly changes in flood irrigation timing and duration, could have a disproportionate impact on reducing total agricultural peat land GHG emissions .Although legends of humans using coffee in Ethiopia date back as early as 875 A.D., the earliest verifiable evidence of human coffee consumption occurs in Yemen in the 15th century. At this time, it was illegal to bring unroasted coffee out of Arabia, and strict measures were taken to ensure that viable coffee seeds did not leave the country. The birth of coffee production in India is attributed to the Indian Muslim saint Baba Budan, who, on his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca, allegedly smuggled seven coffee beans out of Arabia by hiding them in his beard. In 1670 he planted these seeds in Karnataka, and cultivation soon spread throughout the state and into neighboring regions. The first large-scale plantations arose with British colonization and spread rapidly throughout South India, fueled by increasing demand for export to northern latitudes. The proliferation of coffeehouses in Western Europe during this era proved to have substantial social consequences. Also known as “Penny Universities” since the price of entry and a cup of coffee was commonly one penny, coffeehouses in 17th century Britain came to play an important role in social and political discourse. In a society with such a rigid socioeconomic class structure, coffeehouses were unique because they were one of the only places frequented by customers of all classes.Thus they became popular establishments for discourse and debate, open to all classes and unfettered by the structure of academic universities. Intellectuals found in “the hot black liquor a curious stimulus quite unlike that produced by fermented juice of grape.”English coffeehouses “provided public space at a time when political action and debate had begun to spill beyond the institutions that had traditionally contained them,” and because of this, are widely accepted as playing a significant role in birthing the age of Enlightenment in Europe.While coffee was bringing the Enlightenment to Western Europe, the commodity was having opposite effects in the regions where it was being produced.

In India, the age of British plantations was rife with suffering and oppression, as slavery and forced labor were common practice. Historical research reveals that “during Europe’s industrial revolution and rise of bourgeois society, slavery, coffee production, and plantations were inextricably linked.”Historical records indicate that in the 1830s, the East India Company held over 247,000 slaves in Wayanad the Malabar coast alone.Even after slavery was officially abolished in 1861, so-called “agricultural slavery” and indentured labor on plantations continued. 8 According to historical accounts, indentured laborers were treated almost identically as they were during the height of slavery. To this day, an estimated 18.3 million people in India and 46 million people worldwide live in conditions of modern defacto slavery, such as bonded labor, human trafficking, and forced marriage. The global coffee market has always been volatile. Plagued by unpredictable harvests, susceptibility to weather events, and massive disease outbreaks, regional coffee production has risen and fallen dramatically over the centuries. For example, in the late 19th century in Sri Lanka an outbreak of the fungal pathogen known as “coffee rust” caused 90 percent of area under coffee cultivation on the island to be abandoned. 11 This past century has been no different for India. As the Great Depression affected coffee exports around the world in the 1930s, the Coffee Board of India was established to protect farmers and promote consumption of coffee. The Coffee Board of India, run by the federal government’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, pooled farmers’ coffee for export at a set price. This provided price stability for farmers but also eliminated incentives to improve quality. From 1991 – 1996 a series of economic reforms relegated the coffee market in India entirely to the private sector. Immediately thereafter, the price of coffee fell from its 1997 levels of around $2.50 per pound to a staggering 45 cents per pound in 2002, the lowest it has been in over fifty years.India was not alone in this plight. While certainly not the only cause of financial insecurity among farmers, the spread of neoliberalism and free trade in the global commodity market has historically been associated with large increases in price volatility and overall downward trends in price, which has had deleterious effects for small-scale producers who depend on these markets for their livelihoods.

Especially in the 1980s and 1990s, growth and consolidation among multinational commodity traders led to a relative loss of market power among producing nations, while foreign pressure from international donors forced many of those nations to privatize their commodity export authorities against their own best interests.This has led to income instability and poverty for many coffee farmers around the world. The coffee farmers of Kerala are facing many of the same challenges that currently plague coffee farmers all over the world. In recent years the global price of coffee has fell drastically from $2.88-per-pound in 2011 to 93 cents-per-pound as of May 2019.While maintaining its downward trend over the past decade, the price continues to fluctuate wildly, making it impossible for farmers to budget their yearly expenses. It is not unheard of for the price to even dip below an individual farmer’s production costs,round plastic pots leaving powerless farmers forced to sell their harvest at a loss, or let it spoil in the fields and get nothing at all. How is it possible that coffee farmers are selling their harvest for less than what it cost them to produce it? While this seems paradoxical to the very basis of economics, it is a common situation facing farmers of many different cash crops, where prices are determined by what are called “buyer-driven supply chains.” While many factors go into the creation of buyer-driven supply chains, some of the few largest factors are discussed below. All this to say, farmers do not have the capacity to determine the price they get for their own products. Prices are driven by market conditions, speculation, futures contracts, and corporate interests who control the majority of world-market shares. With the growth of powerful commodities traders and the liberalization of international markets, prices for coffee and incomes for farmers have reached historic lows. This has led to an increasingly tenuous existence for those who already struggle to get by. Historically, coffee cultivation consisted of only one plant species, Coffea arabica. Today, Coffea arabica still makes up most of the world’s coffee production , but cultivation of another species, Coffea canephora, also known as robusta coffee, is growing due to its higher levels of hardiness and productivity.In addition, a very small amount of a third species Coffea liberica is grown. Although modern coffee production is currently limited to the scope of these three species, a large diversity of sub-varieties and hybrids are grown throughout the world, each with their own unique flavors and characteristics. Coffea arabica is widely lauded as having the best cup quality, and consistently fetches a higher price on the global commodity market. It also tends to grow better in slightly shaded conditions, making it conducive to traditional inter cropping methods.

In India, Coffea arabica is usually grown under the shade of other cultivated trees, such as jackfruit and areca nut, or under the shade of native forest trees, which are used to support vines of black pepper.In the under story below the coffee plants ginger, clove and turmeric are grown. In addition to sustaining families of farmers for generations, a recent study has shown that these multi-species farms support much higher levels of animal biodiversity than conventional monocultures, and that they sequester soil carbon at the same rate as surrounding rain forests. However, the rise of C. canephora as a cash crop has changed things in Kerala. Due to its higher yields and tolerance to pests such as coffee rust C. canephora plantations have replaced multi-species C. arabica farms over huge swaths of India in recent decades. Today, nearly 80% of coffee grown in Wayanad and surrounding regions is C. canephora. Since this robusta species prefers full-sun conditions, this shift away from C. arabica is associated with the removal of shade trees and a proliferation of full-sun monoculture coffee plantations. This has had substantial consequences for biodiversity, erosion, watershed management, and other ecosystem services.This has the potential to negatively impact the small amount of C. arabica that remains in Kerala. Studies indicate that deforestation can lead to a hotter and drier local climate.Coffea arabica is a finicky plant, thriving in a narrow temperature range between 18˚ – 21˚ Celcius.It follows that this pattern of tree removal could lead to conditions in Kerala becoming less ideal for Coffea arabica. This would suggest the potential for a feedback loop, in which robusta production and the associated deforestation lead even more farmers to convert to robusta in order to cope with changing environmental conditions. If climate change is occurring in Kerala, it would not only be threatening cultivated coffee, but also a multitude of wild species. At least six species of wild coffee are known to occur in India.According to a recent study there are now 124 known species of wild coffee, each with their own under-studied and potentially useful characteristics, such as drought or pest resistance, unique flavor profiles, or naturally decaffeinated beans.Of these, an estimated 60% are threatened with extinction due mostly to climate change and habitat loss.The following analysis examines the local climate of Wayanad in recent decades to determine if any changes are occurring. Farmers interviewed during a field visit to Kerala assert that local conditions have become hotter and drier, especially during specific times of the year that are important to the life cycle of the coffee plant. The farmers of Wayanad have suggested an increasingly unpredictable monsoon season, a failure of the “blossom rains” in early spring, and a decrease in November showers. The following study was conducted to corroborate the personal experience of these farmers, and, in the event that trends are found, to determine if causal factors point to global-scale or local forcings. The district of Wayanad in the State of Kerala, India is a mountainous tropical region with altitudes ranging from 700 to 2100m above sea level, daily temperature minimums from 14˚ – 20˚ C, and daily temperature maximums from 25 – 32˚ C.