Tropentag, September 10 - 12, 2025, Bonn "Reconciling land system changes with planetary health"

Enhancing climate adaptations through dissemination of information, knowledge, and resources in Ethiopian coffee value chain

¹Jimma University, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Ethiopia
²University of Basel, Social Science, Switzerland

Abstract

Millions of people rely on coffee as their primary source of income around worldwide. However, climate change is threating or jeopardising the coffee sector by increasing temperature, altering rainfall patterns, shifting production areas, and disease and pest infestations. Climate change is jeopardising the coffee industry by raising temperatures, altering rainfall patterns, shifting production areas, and causing disease and pest infestations. Farmers and institutional networks are crucial in making effective intervention decisions to mitigate the impacts of climate change on coffee production and marketing. This study aims to assess smallholder farmers and institutional networking strategies in the Ethiopian coffee value chain to enhance climate adaptation activities. We used a survey questionnaire and a semi-structured interview to gather data. The study found that, while farmers have networks from diverse sources, radio, social groups, and extension workers are the key routes for exchanging knowledge to strengthen climate intervention networks. Regarding institutional networks, while institutional networks are weak horizontally in climate intervention networks, they have a slightly stronger in vertical networks. The results also show that, while all institutions contribute to climate interventions, only a few have more power to control the overall flow of Information, Knowledge and Resources (IKRs) in the intervention networks. This illustrates that IKR flows between institutions are relatively restricted compared to Ethiopian coffee industry coverage, which necessitates the involvement of more institutions while also preventing network collapse. The study calls for policymakers and practitioners to build more strong climate intervention networks among smallholder farmers and institutions through capacity building training and multi-institutional collaborations , which improves the coffee sector's resilience.

Keywords: Adaptation practices, climate change, institutions, knowledge flows, social networks

Contact Address: Guta Regasa, Jimma University, College of Agriculture and Veterinary Medicine, Jimma, Ethiopia, e-mail: jiineguta2014gmail.com