Coffee-driven deforestation is making it harder to grow coffee, watchdog group says

As the world's thirst for coffee shows no signs of slowing down, widely used practices to ramp up the crop's production have become self-defeating, according to a nonprofit watchdog group.

In Brazil, the world's biggest coffee producer, coffee farming is driving deforestation — and that, in turn, makes coffee harder to grow.

More than 1,200 square miles of forest were cleared for coffee cultivation in Brazil's coffee-growing areas between 2001 and 2023, according to a new report from the group Coffee Watch . The group used satellite images, government land use data and a forest-loss alert system in its analysis.

Overall, in areas with a high concentration of coffee-growing operations, a total of more than 42,000 square miles of forest are now gone, the report said. This includes fores