Casuarina, eucalyptus, banana, and mango trees… When you walk through the coffee gardens in Peru or Papua New Guinea, you can hardly see it as a layman. These “plantations” are a green paradise – and not just for our organic coffee.
foto: jarek ceborski on unsplash
Casuarina, eucalyptus, banana, and mango trees… When you walk through the coffee gardens in Peru or Papua New Guinea, you can hardly see it as a layman. These “plantations” are a green paradise – and not just for our organic coffee.
foto: jarek ceborski on unsplash
Humming. Buzzing. Chirping (well, more of a croaking and crowing). Rustling. There’s a lot going on in a coffee garden like this, the diversity of insects, birds, and reptiles is huge. And that’s a good thing. Because on the one hand you need bees and such to fertilize the coffee bushes, and on the other hand the birds also eat the pests.
Biodiversity is not the only advantage of organic cultivation. Normally, i.e. in conventional cultivation with monocultures, coffee has a (virtual) water footprint of around 37 gallon per cup of coffee (statistically speaking). With organic or biodynamic cultivation under trees, water consumption is many times lower.
On the one hand, not as much water evaporates in the shade, and on the other, the trees reduce the risk of erosion. The soil has a distinct humus layer and can store water well. And if it rains more than normal, the soil can also drain the water away. This prevents waterlogging and reduces the risk of fungal infections in the coffee bushes.
Of course, this makes harvesting more time-consuming because each coffee cherry must be picked by hand. This in turn has the advantage over conventional cultivation that only the ripe, dark red fruits are harvested. And that is part of the quality – after all, it’s all about the taste. Ultimately, these coffee gardens with their shade trees are a prime example of the functioning coexistence of agriculture and nature. Of economy and ecology. This is reason enough for us to have consistently opted for organic and Fairtrade since our beginnings in the 1980s. We wouldn’t like a coffee that can’t feed its farmers. Would you?
If you would like to know a little more about the positive effects of organic coffee and Demeter cultivation, check out these blog posts:
• Saving water with coffee: Here, Cesar Marin from the Demeter coffee farm La Chacra D’dago shows in a short film what makes a really good soil.
• Biodiversity and the value of the work of insects.
• About harvesting by hand.
• Demeter cultivation: Esoteric nonsense or meaningful?
• What all this has to do with respect and friendship.