The moment I understood the importance of climate resiliance.

The need to invest in climate-resilient coffee practices became real for me in 2025.

Madagascar experienced a severe drought. In some of the regions where we worked, there was virtually no rain for four months. Coffee yields fell by roughly 70 percent compared with the previous year. The coffee that survived was poor quality.

We visited dozens of farmer parcels during the season.

Again and again, we saw the same thing: dry, hardened earth, dehydrated coffee trees, barely any leaves, and almost no cherries.

It was a bad year for everyone.

Then, one day during the harvest, a farmer named Dadamo invited me to visit his parcel.

I was tired.

To be honest, I did not really want to go.

But when a farmer invites you to visit his parcel, out of respect for the numerous times they accomadate us, you visit his parcel.

A Different Coffee Farmer

We walked for about 100 meters.

As we went, I learned that Dadamo had worked for several years as a tree nursery technician. He was deeply passionate about coffee trees and still produced seedlings for people as a side activity, even though he was largely retired.

Then we entered his parcel.

The temperature dropped immediately. We had stepped beneath a layer of shade, protected from the full heat of the sun.

But what I saw also sent shivers down my spine.

The coffee trees were lush and green.

Their leaves were vibrant green.

Bright red cherries covered the branches.

It was a stark contrast to almost every other parcel I had seen that season.

Across the surrounding area, farmers had lost most or all of their production. Dadamo was harvesting coffee from trees he had planted only three years earlier.

The difference was not luck.

It was how he had cared for the land.

What Dadamo Had Done Differently

Dadamo had planted shade trees, with banana plants creating a medium canopy above the coffee.

He had pruned his coffee trees.

He had worked the soil and covered it with mulch.

When we looked down, the difference was just as striking as what we saw on the trees.

On most of the parcels we had visited, the ground was dry clay—hard, exposed, and unable to retain much moisture.

Dadamo’s soil was dark and moist.

The shade reduced the heat reaching the ground. The mulch protected the soil surface and helped it retain water. The pruning allowed the trees to use their energy more efficiently. The parcel functioned as a system rather than as a collection of individual coffee trees.

That year, while many farmers had almost nothing to harvest, Dadamo had his first production from young trees.

The lightbulb went off.

This was what climate resilience looked like.

Climate Resilience Is About Livelihoods

Climate resilience is often discussed in technical language. Often as a response to Climate Change. 

We talk about shade management, soil health, water retention, biodiversity, pruning, and resilient planting material.

All of those things matter.

But standing in Dadamo’s parcel, the idea became much simpler and more meaningful.

Climate resilience is about protecting a farmer’s livelihood.

A coffee tree is not only a plant. It represents years of labor, land preparation, maintenance, and patience. A farmer can plant a tree and care for it for several seasons before receiving a meaningful harvest.

When a drought destroys that production, the loss is not limited to one season’s coffee.

It threatens the farmer’s investment, household income, and confidence in coffee as a viable crop.

We cannot control the climate.

We cannot decide when the rains begin or how long a dry season will last.

But we can influence how exposed a coffee parcel is to those risks.

We can improve the soil so that it retains more moisture.

We can use shade to reduce heat stress.

We can mulch, prune, diversify the parcel, and choose practices that give the trees a better chance of surviving difficult conditions.

We cannot remove the risk.

But we can make the farm less vulnerable to it.

From One Parcel to a Broader Approach

Dadamo’s parcel gave us proof.

During one of the worst seasons farmers had experienced, we could stand in a green, productive parcel and see that the choices made before the drought had changed the outcome during it.

That experience helped shape how I (and MCC) thinks about coffee production.

Our work cannot focus only on increasing yields in a good year.

We have to help farmers build systems that can continue producing when the year is difficult.

That means combining coffee with appropriate shade trees and other useful crops. It means restoring soil rather than allowing it to remain bare and depleted. It means helping farmers manage trees throughout the year, not only when the cherries are ready to harvest.

And it means ensuring that farmers can see these practices working in real conditions.

Dadamo did not avoid the drought.

His parcel experienced the same lack of rain and the same extreme conditions as the farms around him.

But his trees were better prepared.

His soil held moisture.

His canopy reduced heat.

And his investment survived.

That is the lesson we carried away from his farm.