Agroforestry, a farming system where trees are grown alongside crops, has the potential to help achieve multiple development objectives. It can help coffee farms combat climate change by acting as carbon sinks. Beyond reducing carbon emissions, agroforestry helps shield coffee plants from heat and heavy rains, increasing resilience to climate change. Further, products of agroforestry can provide important independent income stream to farmers facing extreme poverty.
In collaboration with a multinational coffee company, this project evaluates an intervention aimed to increase agroforestry adoption among coffee farmers in East Africa. Currently, many coffee farmers in East-Africa fall short of the recommended levels of agroforestry: while agronomists advise an agroforestry intensity (ratio of shade trees to coffee trees) of approximately 10%, median farmer in the study's sample (Rwanda) is only able to adopt agroforestry up to an intensity of about 2%. The study lacks equivalent data about farmers in Uganda, but its is understood from conversations that adoption of agroforestry is even lower there.
This project will embed a Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) scheme in existing supply chain relationship between farmers and out collaborating coffee buyer. The project studies the effectiveness of providing delayed monetary incentives, leaning on robustness of a pre-existing supply chain relationship between farmers and a downstream multinational buyer. Farmers within the study will be randomised into one of three groups:
· Control group (CG): Farmers receive subsidised seedlings for shade trees (starting 2nd half of 2025).
· Treatment 1 (T1): Control group + a subsidy conditional on planting of trees. This treatment replicates standard agroforestry programs.
· Treatment 2 (T2): Control group + a (lower) initial subsidy conditional on planting trees + future price premium when delivering coffee conditional on minimum tree survival in the following seasons (harvests in 2025 and 2026).
T1 vs. CG evaluates take-up of agroforestry through a standard PES scheme. T1 vs. T2 evaluates whether embedding the PES scheme in the supply chain relationship improves take-up and/or survival of shade-trees. The study also plans a second-stage randomisation, in which random takers among T1 farmers are offered T2 incentives. This helps disentangle incentive effects from selection effects of T2 relative to T1.
The research team has built a strong partnership with a major coffee company and hopes to use the findings to promote similar agroforestry programs in other coffee-producing countries. This project aims to contribute to both climate change mitigation and poverty reduction, offering a model that could be scaled globally.
