Brazil’s Coffee Production Hit Due to Deforestation

Even as Brazil is preparing to host the 30^th Conference of the Parties (COP-30) next month, the South American nation’s coffee heartland has lost more than 11 million hectares of forest, a footprint of destruction on the scale of Honduras, according to a new report by the non-profit industry watch dog ‘Coffee Watch.’

Coffee harvest in Brazil, which is the world’s biggest coffee producer, is projected at 62.3 million bags in 2025/26, down 3.4% from previous estimates and 5.3% y-o-y.

An analysis of Coffee Watch’s 34-page report entitled “Wake Up and Smell the Deforestation,” also revealed that from 2001 to 2023, Within this vast footprint, at least 312,803 hectares were directly cleared for coffee. The first-ever integrated mapping shows 737,000 hectares of forest loss inside coffee farms, 77% in the Cerrado and 20% in the Atlantic Forest.

Historical analysis of pre-2000 data also revealed that coffee was a top driver of Atlantic Forest deforestation, with less than 90% remaining today. The report links forest loss to drying trends across the coffee belt, and the rainfall losses to crop failures.

In 2014, rainfall fell up to 50% below normal in parts of Minas Gerais, the leading coffee-producing region of Brazil, and 8 of the last 10 years registered deficits. NASA’s Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) data show soil moisture declines up to 25% over six years in top coffee-producing zones. A worrying trend in light of coffee’s need for soil moisture to grow.

These climate shocks are also hitting wallets. Landmark droughts in 2016–17, 2019–20 and 2023 slashed yields and contributed to over 40% price rises in 2023–24. Modelling indicates up to two-thirds of Brazil’s suitable Arabica area could be lost by 2050, the report said.

Key Findings

Coffee cultivation area was over 105% higher in 2023 as against in 1990 and Minas Gerais bore the largest ecological toll within the coffee belt while indirect deforestation patterns cluster around expansion zones.

Coffee is the sixth largest driver of deforestation in the world, and as Brazil exports a third of global coffee, what has happened in Brazil is a big part of that.

Coffee Watch Director Etelle Higonnet said that coffee has driven massive deforestation in Brazil, not just in the last centuries but in the last decades, and it is still destroying forests to this day.

He added: “Brazil needs to reverse course urgently because this deforestation isn’t just a carbon and biodiversity disaster. It’s also killing rains and leading to crop failures. Rains are failing where coffee expands at the expense of forests. As a result, climate shocks are hitting wallets. Brazil’s coffee future is on the line.”

The report also indicated that agroforestry zones such as Zona da Mata Mineira showed greater moisture stability even during droughts—yet less than 1% of Brazil’s key coffee zones use agroforestry today. While there is a scalable resilience pathway, adoption is lagging.

EUDR Non-Compliance Cases

Released alongside the Brazil coffee deforestation report, a new investigation from AidEnvironment and Coffee Watch revealed six fresh cases of potential European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) non-compliance in Rondonia where coffee was planted directly on land cleared after the EUDR 2020 cut-off date.