Nav: Home > Coffee News >

Introducing trees in coffee plantations can boost yields

Published: 2026-05-17 Author: World Gafei

Last Updated: 2026/05/17, Can you imagine a tree mixed with your coffee? It may sound like a bad idea, but a new study shows that growing trees mixed with coffee bushes increases bird populations and coffee production.

One of the main risks for bean growers is the coffee bark beetle, an insect that drills into the coffee beans and lays eggs into them. A recent study at the Alpine Coffee Farm in Jamaica has shown that introducing insect-eating songbirds into plantations can suppress pests such as the black-throated blue warbler (a black-throated blue warbler is about to grab a coffee bark).

However, it is a difficult task to maintain the bird population in the garden. Because coffee bark beetles are small and have seasonal population changes, they make up only 10% of the songbird food. To see if adding extra bird habitats in the form of trees and shrubs can make a difference, biologists have created a series of computer simulations of ecosystems in and around coffee farms.

The results show that replacing about 5% of the coffee acreage with trees, which are scattered at random on the farm, can triple the number of birds living here. On April 7, the research team published the results online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

These increases can reduce the infection rate of coffee beetles from about 35% to less than 15%, and despite the reduction in coffee acreage, it has brought a slight increase in coffee bean production. If the simulation results can be used in the real world, it may be a good choice to have your coffee with a few bushes.

FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。