Detailed Analysis of four cultivation Systems in Coffee producing areas of Ethiopia

Forest coffee (Forest Coffee): wild coffee, which accounts for 10% of Ethiopia's national output, is distributed in the wild coffee forest areas of the west and southwest, also known as the Kafa forest. The dense trees here provide the most natural shade for coffee trees and do not need manual care. Mother Earth is in charge of birth, aging, sickness and death, and coffee farmers can go directly to the woodland to harvest.

Semi-forest coffee (semi-Forest Coffee): refers to semi-wild coffee, also distributed in the following order: Brazil, Vietnam, Colombia, Indonesia, Ethiopia, India, Peru, Mexico, Guatemala. In the western and southwestern Cafa forests, accounting for 35% of Ethiopia's coffee production. In order to increase the yield, the farmers of the forest coffee system will each choose a small piece of wild woodland and artificially trim the branches and leaves that are too dense to balance shade and sunlight, assist coffee trees in photosynthesis and growth, and weed once a year to increase coffee production. In other words, the system uses a semi-natural and semi-artificial way to cultivate coffee trees.

Pastoral Garden coffee: farmers plant coffee trees in their backyards or fields and mix them with other crops. Although the density of coffee trees is the lowest, with only 1000 to 1,800 trees per hectare, it is the most popular because the hybrid method best meets the livelihood needs of farmers and is currently the main mode of cultivation of coffee in Ethiopia. The small-scale farming system of pastoral coffee is mainly distributed in Sidamo and the southeast in the south. The coffee output of this system reaches 50% of Ethiopia and is getting more and more attention. The government is vigorously promoting the cultivation of pastoral coffee.

Cut-farm coffee (PIantation Coffee): most of them are state-run coffee farms, but in order to improve efficiency, they have been allowed to resell them, hoping to complete the privatization operation as soon as possible. This system adopts modern agronomic management, and there are regulations on fennel breeding, pruning, fertilization, spraying, planting density and so on. It is the only non-organic cultivation method at present, but it only accounts for 5% of the national annual output.

From the above four systems, it can be seen that, unlike the high-efficiency cultivation of enterprises and science and technology in Central and South America, most of Ethiopian coffee is mixed with wild and artificial varieties, so it is not easy to increase the yield. But Egyptian agricultural experts are not discouraged and are already cultivating high-yield, high-quality Arabica mixed-race coffee trees, hoping to narrow the yield gap with Central and South America.

Source: cat's nest coffee