Introducing trees in coffee plantations can boost yields

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.