Harvesting and storage

Harvest of the crop is the completion of the production cycle and the end of a growing season.
Depending on the variety, it will take approximately 3 or 4 years for the newly planted  coffee trees to begin to bear fruit. The fruit, called the coffee cherry, turns a bright,  deep red when it is ripe and ready to be harvested.  In most countries, the coffee  crop is picked by hand, a labor-intensive and difficult process, though in places like  Brazil, where the landscape is relatively flat and the coffee fields immense, the  process has been mechanized. Whether picked by hand or by machine, all coffee  is harvested in one of two ways:

Strip Picked - the entire crop is harvested at one time. This can either be done by  machine or by hand.  In either case, all of the cherries are stripped off of the branch  at one time.

 

Selectively Picked - only the ripe cherries are harvested and they are picked  individually by hand. Pickers rotate among the trees every 8 - 10 days, choosing  only the cherries which are at the peak of ripeness. Because this kind of harvest is  labor intensive, and thus more costly, it is used primarily to harvest the finer arabica  beans.

In most coffee-growing countries, there is one major harvest a year; though in  countries like Colombia, where there are two flowerings a year, there is a main and  secondary crop. A good picker averages approximately 100 to 200 pounds of coffee cherry a day,  which will produce 20 to 40 pounds of coffee beans. At the end of a day of picking,  each worker's harvest is carefully weighed and each picker is paid on the merit of his or her work. The day's harvest is then combined and transported to the processing plant.

Storage
Before being exported, the coffee beans will be even more precisely sorted by size and weight. They will also be closely evaluated for color flaws or other imperfections.
Typically, the bean size is represented on a scale of 10 to 20. The number represents the size of a round hole's diameter in terms of 1/64's of an inch. A number 10 bean would be the approximate size of a hole in a diameter of 10/64 of an inch and a number 15 bean, 15/64 of an inch. Beans are sized by being passed through a series of different sized screens. They are also sorted pneumatically by using an air jet to separate heavy from light beans.

Next defective beans are removed.  Though this process can be accomplished by sophisticated machines, in many countries, it is done by hand while the beans move along an electronic conveyor belt.  Beans of unsatisfactory size, color, or that are otherwise unacceptable, are removed. This might include over-fermented beans, those with insect damage or that are unhulled. In many countries, this process is done both by machine and hand, insuring that only the finest quality coffee beans are exported. When the beans are checked, they will be stored mostly in bags of 50 kg each.

Pests and diseases

Major pests in coffee:

Coffee Borer Beetle:
The coffee borer beetle is a small black beetle that bores into the lower portion of the coffee fruit and lays eggs in the seed endosperm. The coffee borer beetle thrives in humid conditions and dense crop spacing. The best means to limit infestations are through proper plant pruning and ensuring that all coffee is harvested and no coffee fruit is left in the fields between harvest.

Black Twig Borer:
The black twig borer is native to Asia where it is a serious pest of Robusta coffee, but has spread to coffee growing regions throughout the world where it attacks Arabica coffee as well. Females bore into branches, twigs, and suckers, leaving a pin-hole sized entry. The plant is destroyed through tunneling as well as pathogens introduced by the borer. The black twig borer thrives in humid conditions since humidity facilitates the ambrosia fungus upon which the borer feeds in its younger stages. Infestations can be controlled by pruning (specifically removing unwanted suckers) and shade reduction.

Nematodes:
Nematodes are worm-like organisms that are 0.1-5mm in length. They attack the root system of plants, feeding on the sap. They can form knots in the roots that inhibit the plant from properly feeding. Symptoms of a nematode infestation are galls, splits, scales and decreased mass in the root system, and chlorosis and defoliation in the upper plant. C. canephora is more resistant to nematode infestations, and thus using seedlings engrafted in C. canephora rootstock is a means of limiting outbreaks.

Major diseases in coffee:

Bacterial Blight:
Bacterial Blight, also called Elgon Die-back, was first identified in Garca, Sao Paulo, Brazil, thus its name "garcae." It normally occurs in seedling nurseries and affects plant leaves and tissue. Leaves initially appear to be water-soaked, followed by the appearance of necrotic brown lesions surrounded by yellow rings. The leaves eventually dry, curl up, blacken and die; however, they do not fall from the tree.

Coffee Berry Disease (CBD):
Coffee berry disease (CBD) is caused by the fungus Colletotrichum kahawae. CBD was first documented in 1922 in Kenya. It attacks coffee berries at any point  in their maturation; however, only symptoms detected on young berries can be clearly diagnosed. The disease can appear in "active" form and "scab" form. In the "active" form, dark-colored indented spots appear on the coffee bean and are followed by a pale pink crust as the spores develop. The berry is destroyed in a matter of days and reduced to an empty, blackened and dried out pouch. The "scab" form is a much milder attack where several small concave spots form on the berry.

Coffee rust:
Since the first occurance of coffee rust in Brazil in 1970, it has spread to every coffee growing country in the world.  Because of the destructive and widespread nature of the disease, many countries, including Sri Lanka and Ethiopia, replaced much of their arabica coffee with disease resistant robusta coffee. Coffee leaf rust is spread by wind and rain from spores from lesions on the underside of the plant. The rust diesease in coffee is prevented by spraying with copper-based fungicides at 3-5 kg/ha at 4-6 week intervals during the rainy season.

Cropping systems

Cropping systems enable the management of crops so as to efficiently use the available climatic and soil resources. The cropping systems that producers use are therefore greatly influenced by the environmental conditions of a region. Cropping systems vary in their biodiversity. Biodiversity refers to all the species of living organisms in an agroecosystem that we will consider a whole farm. Continuous cropping and crop rotation are two approaches for using a land area or field over the years. With coninuous cropping, the same crop is frown for 2 or more years on the same land. Continuous cropping is typically practiced when there are economic incentives for growing that single crop or there is a limited market for alternative crops.

Coffee plants are grown from seed in seedbeds until they have two true leaves. Seedlings are shaded to prevent excessive water loss. After 3 months they are moved into nursery beds where they grow to 20-40 cm high before transplanting out in to the field at the start of the rainy season.First harvests are taken after bushes flower at 3-4 years old. Coffee plants produce cherry-like fruit (‘berries’) with red skins when ripe. These are harvested 7-8 months after flowering.The most expensive and labor intensive method of harvesting is to go over the crop several times picking only the ripe fruit. Alternatively, if ripening is relatively uniform, the crop may be stripped by hand or mechanically, Unripe berries are sorted later. Two beans are usually found within each fruit. ‘Green coffee’ is the extracted beans ready for roasting.

Soils

The soil is a medium for the production and growth of plants and crops. It provides an environment for plant roots to grow and absorb the water, oxygen, and nutrients essential for plant development and growth. The ability of a soil to supply important chemical nutrients or essential elements is described as soil fertility. Soils provide Anchorage for plants. Roots growing in soils support the upright stem and leaf structure of a plant. Roots of most crop plants are often found in the top foot of the soil, where air, water, and nutrients aare ideal for growth. Soils are ecosystems. Soils contain numerous organisms that interacht including plants, bacteria, fungi, insects, and invertebrates. As part of this ecosystem soils provide essential surfaces such as carbon sequestration and the sequestration of toxic chemicals. Finally, the soil is also valuable as a site for recreation and as a foundation for buildings and roadways. Unfortunatlely, human construction and recreational activities often result in changes to and destruction of soils.

So, the soil is very important because soil is the primary system from which the plant lives and absorbs water and critical nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, etc.  When the soil system is managed properly it can also help to maintain the moisture level needed to give the coffee plant the water it needs. This is especially important during dry spells.
If soil is well managed- in other words- if farmers make sure that their soils receive the requisite amounts of organic matter, moisture, sunlight, aeration, nutrients, vegetative cover, etc., then the soil on their farms will achieve the proper balance of physical, chemical and biological properties that helps to ensure the overall health of plants. You have to think of soil as a balanced system. If you remove more than what you put in it then the system will collapse.  That’s why Integrated Soil Fertility Management is so essential to the health of the plant.  The fertility of the soil is its capacity to provide nutrients to plants.  High fertility translates into healthy coffee plants and higher yields, that is, as long as there is enough water in the soil as well. In order for a coffee plant to produce 100 pounds of green coffee it must extract from the soil approximately 1.45 kg of nitrogen, 0.28 kg of phosphorous, and 1.74 kg of potassium.

Improving Plants

The coffee beans are one of the most important beverages of the humandity in the world. Coffee is produced in about 80 tropical countries with an annual production of nearly seven million tons of green beans. Many livelihoods in developing countries are dependent on this crop. The increase of plant biotechnology has led to many advances in the field of coffee production, including breeding and cultivar development, resistance to pests and diseases, quality improvement (aroma, flavor etc), product diversication and post harvest strategies.  The major challenge in coffee breeding is the very narrow genetic base of the crop. To overcome this, breeders need to come up with ways of broadeing coffee's genetic variability by means of traditional and/or biotechnological methods. Studies told us that it takes about 30 years to develop a new cultivar of coffee. The knowledge of the improvements can be used to breed varieties that meet the demands of growers, processors and consumers, such as resistance to leaf rust disease. Caused by a fungus, leaf rust is the most economically important coffee disease in the world and has a considerable impact on the coffee industry and the economy of small producers in Central American countries such as Guatemala, Honduras and Costa Rica.

Impact on the environment

Many aspects of our environment influence crop production practices. The sun is the source of all energy on the earth, and its characteristics influence atmospheric characteristics, photosynthesis, and other plant growth processes. The pattern of the sun's energy distribution on the earth creaters climate as do topographic features. Temperature and precipitation are two important aspects of climate that influence human activity and crop production. Producers select crops and develop management strategies to make optimum use of their environmental resources. Increasing competition and a drive for increased output are impacting the environment in negative ways, with monocropping becoming the new norm alongside ‘sun cultivation’ methods. WWF reports that because of this, 2.5 million acres of forest in Central America have been cleared to make way for coffee farming, and this deforestation is on the rise in coffee-growing countries. Incidentally, 37 of the 50 countries in the world with the highest deforestation rates are also major coffee producers.

Specifically, some researches that a far larger share of the world's coffee than ever before is now being grown in direct sunlight, rather than under the shade of a canopy of trees. These full-sun coffee farms are scarcely any different from the large plots of monoculture corn and soybeans that have been vilified by environmentalists over the past several decades.
By contrast, large trees provide a habitat for native wildlife, support soil health, fight erosion and confer side benefits, like fruit and firewood, to farmers. Much of the recent shift away from shade is due to the growth of the coffee industries in Brazil and Vietnam, the first- and second-biggest producers in the world. Because coffee plants evolved in the understory of the East African jungle, they were grown only in shade for the first several hundred years of human cultivation. But in the 1970s, agronomists started to believe that growing coffee in direct sunlight could increase photosynthesis, prevent disease and allow greater density of shrub planting. So farmers cut down the tree canopies that shaded their shrubs. They compensated for the loss of natural insect-killing birds and bats by applying more pesticides and for the loss of the trees' soil-fertilizing leaves and roots by applying more fertilizers. The only way to Ensure that your coffee is good for the planet is to buy beans that have been certified by Rainforest Alliance, or, even better The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Organic and fair-trade beans are great too, but those certifications do not specifically account for shade cover or biodiversity.