Sustainable Coffee Production

Abstract

Coffee is an extremely important agricultural commodity, produced in about 80 tropical countries, with an estimated 125 million people depending on it for their livelihoods in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, with an annual production of about nine million tons of green beans. Consisting of at least 125 species, the genus Coffea L. (Rubiaceae, Ixoroideae, Coffeeae) is distributed in Africa, Madagascar, the Comoros Islands, the Mascarene Islands (La Réunion and Mauritius), tropical Asia, and Australia. Two species are economically important for the production of the beverage coffee, C. arabica L. (Arabica coffee) and C. canephora A. Froehner (robusta coffee). Higher beverage quality is associated with C. arabica. Coffea arabica is a self-fertile tetraploid, which has resulted in very low genetic diversity of this significant crop. Coffee genetic resources are being lost at a rapid pace due to varied threats, such as human population pressures, leading to conversion of land to agriculture, deforestation, and land degradation; low coffee prices, leading to abandoning of coffee trees in forests and gardens and shifting of cultivation to other more remunerative crops; and climate change, leading to increased incidence of pests and diseases, higher incidence of drought, and unpredictable rainfall patterns. All these factors threaten livelihoods in many coffee-growing countries. The economics of coffee production has changed in recent years, with prices on the international market declining and the cost of inputs increasing. At the same time, the demand for specialty coffee is at an all-time high. In order to make coffee production sustainable, attention should be paid to improving the quality of coffee by engaging in sustainable, environmentally friendly cultivation practices, which ultimately can claim higher net returns.

Sustainable Production of Robusta Coffee under a Changing Climate: A 10-Year Monitoring of Fertilizer Management in Coffee Farms in Vietnam and Indonesia

“…It is cultivated in over 50 countries and covers more than 11 million ha around the world [3]. Coffee plays a crucial role in the economies of producing countries (e.g., the gross domestic product largely depends on coffee export revenues with the sector employing an important proportion of the rural population [3,4]. The two economically important coffee species-Arabica (Coffea arabica L.) and Robusta (C. canephora Pierre ex A. Froehner)-account for about 99% of world coffee production [3, 5,6] with Arabica representing roughly 60%.…”

“…Developing sustainable agricultural production systems involves dealing with various and interrelated aspects including water management, land capability and use, biodiversity, energy, soil quality, agricultural production and productivity, and socio-economic aspects [14,15]. Of particular interest for coffee is the implementation of environmentally-friendly and sustainable production practices [4]. The coffee industry's growth in the major producing countries is expected to be fuelled over the next years given an increased activity at both consumer and trade levels from both domestic and foreign players.…”

Development and Experimental Results of a Thermal Oil Based Roasting System for Decentralized Processing of Groundnuts

“…The predicted and obtained results were compared and ANOVA for each response was tabulated for examining the validity of the designed model. The generalized model for each predicted response is given in Equation (1).…”

“…Tropical regions are famous for producing different kinds of nuts and beans, but the majority of these produces are exported to industrialized countries in perishable form without any subsequent post-harvest processing [1,2]. The growers of developing countries are facing a challenging scenario for adding value to their agricultural products due to insufficient on-farm processing facilities and inaccessibility to the centralized electricity grid, particularly in rural and far-flung areas.…”

Soil morphostructural characterization and coffee root distribution under agroforestry system with Hevea Brasiliensis

“…A sustainable coffee (Coffea sp.) production depends on increased profitability associated to continuous cultivation (Krishnan, 2017). Agroforestry (AF) systems combine forest and crops and/or pastures to deal with challenges associated to climatic, edaphic, and biological factors, which affect large-scale monoculture crops (Ramachandran Nair et al, 2009).…”