We are seeing a bright light at the end of the journey

You guys are hearing from me way sooner than you would probably expect!

Without any further introduction I will continue our journey through the wonderworlds of coffee.

Soils
Soils! Were would be without earth underneath our feet. We would be lost, just as the coffee plant. It is lost without it's ground to grow on. But ofcourse a coffee plant cannot grow on every soil type.

basaltic red soil

Coffee is mainly grown on basaltic red soil with high natural fertility and thick soil layers. This soil mostly occurs in areas were there is a hot and moisture climate, which is very suitable for Robusta coffee. And this is the coffee that is mostly produced in Vietnam.

Vietnam exists of 14 different soil groups that can be divided into 31 soil units. But to make it a bit easier we can divide this into two big combinations.

The first one is called the Mountainous and hilly soils: These are the soils that can best be cultivated by perennial crops and fruit crops that don't need a lot of additives.
Secondly we have the delta soils: these are the soils that are mainly found at deltas like the Red River, the Mekon River and so on. These are the regions that have high levels of intensive farming. With the right usage of irrigation the degradation of the soil can be minimal.

The basaltic red soil belongs to the mountainous and hilly soils.In the north/eastern part of Vietnam a lot of forest has been removed for coffee plantations for example. High land soils like these are easily lost through erosion. There is a system that when trees are not fully grown yet in their first five years, they let grasses with high yields grow inbetween the trees. dairying will eat these grasses, but due to the roots you can prevent soil erosion. This would be a nice system for coffee trees in their beginning face when they do not yet grow coffee beans.

Nutritional Values
In the table below you can find all the micro and macro nutrients that a coffee plant needs to grow sufficiently, with their role described.

Eventhough a soil allready supplies a lot of nutrients to the plant, and manure and compost is added to keep the soil vitale, it sometimes is not enough. Sometimes fertilizers will be added to give the coffee plant the right amount of nutrients that is needed. The farmers need to make sure that they take the right fertilizers with the right amount nutrients in it. These fertilizers can be bought by different kind of companies. In Vietnam a lot of fertilizers are mixed by local suppliers which makes the amount bigger, but the quality worse. As a result that farmers spray a lot of fertilizers.

When a coffee plant has a nutrient deficiency it will start showing symptoms. Plants will grow and produce only as much as the least available nutrient will allow them to. When coffee plants start lacking Nitrogen and potassium they will start suffering from dieback (especially with no shade and no water). When a soil is low of calcium and phosphorus the root development will be less. And that means that the plant can't take up as much nutrients as it wants.

Weed management
Within a coffee plantation a lot of annual and perennial weeds can be found. Within the climate that Vietnam has, weeds thrive and can try to take up the growing space of the coffee plants. The small farms that only have a few trees do the weeding by hand. This is very labour intensive, and takes up a lot of time. When herbicides are used effectively it can lower the amount of weeds significantly. Herbicides that are used for this are mostly paraquat and glyphosate, they do not have any effect on the soil and what is left over goes into the soil, and keeps the weed from growing. Ofcourse the most sustainable way of keeping the weeds from the fields, is to do it by hand, but this is not possible due to the labour needed for this. So the best way to keep the weeds in control is using herbicides. But because a lot of farmers are not aware of the effects and the amount needed, it is very important that they are educated in the correct way.

Plant diseases
Coffee plants have to deal with a lot of stupid insects that try to infect the plants. You can have bacterial diseases, fungicides, and isecticides. I'll give some examples of some diseases.

Bacterial blight (Pseudomonas syringae) 
This is a bacteria that causes water-soaked spots on leaves, which causes the leaves to dry out and become brown and necrotic with yelllow halos. The bacteria can spreads rapidly down branches, leaves, and turns black and dies. The leaves do stay attached on the trees.
The disease spreads itself over long distance by moving infected seedlings, or through the water.

You can use protective sprays that contain copper, which is applied to the plants just before the rainy season. 

Black twig borer (Xylosandrus compactus) 

This is an insect that causes the coffee leaves to start "flagging". You can find a whole on the stams

in which the insect entered the plant. If you cut the leaves and stems open, you can see that is hollow, which is caused by the insect. The insect is so small, that you rarely see it. The adults try and stay cozy within the coffee plant during winter (eventhough that it will still be warm outside).
If you want to get rid of this little beast, you need to cut the stems in such a way that you cut away the insects and their paths. If you will then use enough fertilizer and irrigation, the plants recovery will be fine. 

Correspora leaf spot (brown eye spot) 

These are, as the name allready says, brown spots that occur on the leaves, due to a fungus. The infected leaves fall off the plants even before the maturity. The disease is easily spread by wind, water and due to the workers in the fields. Within rainy season this occurs more.
To be sure that this will not happen to the coffee plants it is important to have your plants well fertilized, because nutrient deficient plants are more volnurable. If the brown eye spots do occur then it can be controlled with the use of copper fungicides.

Coffee trees can fight for themselves also, and are preaty resistent to the pests, diseases, and insects. But due to the big rise in nematodes (yellow leaf) in 2007, there was a big loss within the yields. Looking at the state of diseases, nematodes, and so on, this does not cause big issues for the farmers. The bigger problems can be found within the aging of the trees and the soil fertility decline.
The farmers that are producing coffee do are very reliant on the usage of fertilizers (due to the soil problem) and diesel (needed for irrigation).

Harvesting and Storage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oJTWak4rbU  
In this small video you can see the Vietnamese people hanging in top of the tree trying to get the coffee beans out of there, which makes the coffee beans fall on the ground, straight into this big sack on the ground.

The storage of coffee beans is done after the coffee beans are dried and roasted. They go into the type of bags that can be found in the picture. It is very important that they put these bags on pallets, so in that way air can run through underneath it. If you store it well, it can be stored for a while. In that way you can buy your coffee all year round.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qfjLCOXMMg
In this next video,the one and only jungle joe from youtube will explain to you how to make coffee from scratch!

Organic production
Jungle Joe! In the next video he will explain to you the differences between a organic coffee farm and an inorganic coffee farm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l673M6savFw
You can see that within the organic farm, they have very healthy and happy coffee trees. But the problems with the weeds growing around, under, up, and every other place, are big. The people get a little more money for their coffee beans, because they can sell it for a higher price in the shop, but the effort is 10 times as big as inorganic farming. So a lot of farmers in Vietnam do not focus on this, because the costs of fertilizers and herbicides are low.

Nowadays, people tend to be very focussed on healthy foods, and a good way of producing it. I think that a coffee market for organic production can be huge. For example, star bucks is a very big chain for coffee, where a lot of famous and young people want to get their statement and drink their coffee. If a company like that would promote organic coffee big time, people would start buying it more.
In the Netherlands you also have the Max Havelaar, Fairtrade, organisation. They try to give farmers a better amount of money for their products, and a better way of living and producing. This is not always done organically, but they still try and make the farmers more consious about the environment, and the way that their production has influence on this.

But for small holder farmers in Vietnam, it will be difficult to go fully organic. First of all they will have trouble with fertilizing the soils properly, due to the nutrient difficiency within the soils. Secondly they allready have just a small amount of money, and that makes it a big step to go organic, eventhough your harvest can be more unsure. Lastly when specialty coffee importers visit farmers they want to have the top quality, and something that looks pretty, most of the time they end up on a conventional producing coffee farm.

I hope you enjoyed the blog again, and let's hope you will start enjoying your coffee organic ;)

Cheers,

Suzanne