Coffee is a real prima Donna when it comes to water: it likes
just enough and not too much. In an ideal location coffee would
thrive with about 180cm of rainfall evenly distributed through the
year. In a non-ideal world, mulching and irrigation can help to
sustain the tree's moisture to some extent in particular dry
seasons, although the tree must never be allowed to stand in water.
Water-wise, a high-grown Arabica is probably the most fortunate
species, if its particular location affords lot of the misty, cloudy
days so often found in mountainous tropical regions. Also, cloud
cover is important because coffee trees want only very restricted
hours of direct exposure to the sun which is why they are planted on
hillsides and under banana trees.
For each person on earth who enjoys coffee, there are probably a
hundred million insects who feel exactly the same: while you savor
your cappuccino, there are countless snout beetles, fruit flies,
leaf-miners, mealy bugs, antesta and white borers, snacking on
various parts of coffee plants all over the world. Insecticides are
not the planter's only friend: coffee trees must be protected
against blights such as root disease, coffee berry disease and leaf
rust, any of which can be even more devastating and widespread than
insects. In the last few years there has been more positive
confirmation that certain off-tastes in coffee beans may be the
result of micro-organisms in the soil, although why the same trees
are not affected every year remains a mystery.
