About Coffee Agriculture

About Coffee Agriculture

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.

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