Coffee is Central America’s leading export and the source of 1.5 million jobs in the region. In some countries a fungus known as coffee rust, or La Roya, has affected up to 70 percent of plantations. Many small-holder farmers are trying to fight it by replacing aging trees or spraying fertilizer and fungicide. But, income losses have been compounded by lower global coffee prices and the chronic lack of long-term financing is a constraint.
IFC, working in partnership with Atlantic (a subsidiary of the coffee trader Ecom), Starbucks Corporation, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), has developed an innovative way to provide farmers with the long-term financing and technical assistance they need to replant.
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