1. By: www.BuyOrganicCoffee.org

2. We have written previously aboutthe dilemma that organic coffeegrowers face when coffee leaf rustInfects their crops.Now Bloomberg has taken notice. 3. In an article entitled OrganicCoffee Threatened by GlobalWarming-Stoked Fungus the newsorganization discusses how growersare faced with spraying and losingtheir organic status or not sprayingand losing their coffee plants. 4. Teodomiro Melendres Ojeda, anorganic coffee grower in Cajamarca,Peru, stands at a crossroads.Neither path is attractive. 5. Leaf-rust fungus, known as roya inSpanish, has devastated about athird of his crop. 6. Melendres, 48, can use chemicalsto kill it, though he risks forfeiting hisorganic certification and the 10percent price premium it brings. 7. Or he can preserve the certificationand watch his plants die. 8. What are the possible remedies fororganic coffee growers to thisspreading coffee plague? 9. Colombia Beats La Roya 10. Leaf rust, called la roya in Spanish,requires night time temperaturesabove 50 degrees Fahrenheit tothrive. 11. This usually kept the disease belowabout 3000 foot elevation. It alsolikes more rain. 12. When el Nino hit Colombia in 2008it provided the rain and highermountain temperatures allowed thefungus to thrive at altitudes up to6,000 feet. 13. Colombia lost forty percent of itsArabica coffee crop that year. 14. The Colombian Coffee GrowersAssociation started cross breedingstudies in the early 1980s and hastwo strains of Colombian leaf rustresistant coffee, Colombian andCastillo. 15. The first is a cross between an oldColombian variety, Caturra, and arust-resistant strain from SoutheastAsia, the Timor hybrid. 16. Castillo is an offshoot of furthercross breeding of the firstColombian leaf rust resistant coffeestrain. 17. Replanting with Colombian leaf rustresistant coffee in Colombia hasreduced the incidence of leaf rustfrom 40% to 5% from 2011 to 2013. 18. However, to accomplish this, theColombians needed to uproot fortypercent of their coffee crop andreplant. 19. This is what organic growers arefacing all across Latin America. 20. What Is an Organic CoffeeFarmer to Do? 21. With organic coffee threatened by laroya many organic farmers simplyspray and forget about theircertification. 22. But, if the infestation is severecoffee plants are lost anyway. Anarticle in the online LaPrensa inHonduras, 23. Los efectos roya del caf enHonduras impactan en alimentacinde familias pobres, notes that notonly are coffee growers losingmoney and the economy ofHonduras being affected but poorcoffee workers are starving. 24. Los ingresos de las familias muypobres y pobres -afectadas por laroya del caf- cayeron al nivel de lalnea de supervivencia 25. subraya un estudio de Oxfam alque tuvo acceso Efe, que ademsrecomienda acciones oficialesinmediatas para auxiliar a lospobladores de las zonas azotadas. 26. In English:Family incomes of workersaffected by leaf rust have fallenbelow the level necessary tosurvive according to Oxfam 27. The plain fact of the matter is thatmany organic growers are smallfamily operations that hire local helpin managing, picking andprocessing their crop. 28. The forty percent or more croplosses in countries like Hondurashave caused significant hardship. 29. An interesting article in the onlineTimes-Picayune notes that theeffects of la roya are pushingpeople to the US border. 30. Meet the worlds most importantcoffee disease that youve neverheard of rust fungus, a.k.a. laroya. 31. Its spores, which can devastateentire coffee farms, forced SriLanka to uproot all its coffee trees inthe 1860s and start growing tea. 32. Today, climate conditions haveaccelerated the fungus growth inCentral America, uprooting farmersand fueling a wave of immigration tothe U.S.