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Seeking Capacity of Agroforestry
Mexico, the Birthplace of Organic Coffee
 
 

In recent years, there has been serious environmental issues such as deforestation and soil pollution in coffee cultivation, and these issues are leading to global warming.  In order to prevent deforestation, there is an approach called Agroforestry (combination of agricultural and forestry), which trys to make a good use of trees and shrubs on cultivation.

Agroforestry method was born in Mexico, which is called the birthplace of organic coffee cultivation as well. The method has been continuously practiced by indigenous people there from a long time ago. They have positively kept utilizing natural resources in various ways through their life cycles, and kept conserving forests and biological diversity, with their vision of the universe. They have also taken hundreds years to "design forest" at the same time - this is how Agroforestry was born.

 

There are two features of Mexican coffee cultivation.
One is the great proportion of indigenous people in those who are involved. There are approx. 3 million people involved in coffee industry, and almost 60% of them belong to one of 30 Mexican ethnic groups (there are 56 groups in total).

As soon as coffee was introduced from Europe in eighteenth century, they have started coffee cultivation in their traditional Agroforestry method, with various shrubs and crops in forest.

The other feature is that coffee cultivation area is distributed so wide throughout Mexico. Coincidentally, these areas accord to biodiversity hotspot (biogeographic region) in Mexico. It means there is a variety of cultures and traditions alive as well as biodiversity in these coffee cultivation areas.

On the other hand, agriculture in plantation style (monoculture over a large area) is totally opposite from agroforestry. Plantation was introduced with following modern technique and does not consider the ecosystem conservation. In plantation agriculture, all the shrubs including protophytes will be cut off, except the plants for commercial. Moreover, there is a need of intensive use of a great amount of pesticide to maintain the plantation. Therefore, cultivation does not last for long in this style as it damages soil a lot. Obviously, it is completely opposite from agroforesty in which forest is capable of regenerate by itself.


Then, how agroforestry is operated?

Let's see the example of farm Cruz Grande in Pluma Hidalgo region, Oaxaca. There is a well nourished soil with organic substances from humus, and marvelous diverse forests.

 
Perhaps there is no areas which cultivates Tipica as much as this farm.
 

Meeting at lunch in the farm.
 

As the farm was created with utilizing the ecosystem, it conserves biodiversity there as well. Also, they can get income and harvest for private use from the forest by growing various crops. There are about 150 kinds of crops grow in per a hectare, and we can see how biologically rich this forest is.

Of cause, there are some problems too. They have to operate harvesting by hand because they do not trim the forest in agroforestry and it is hard to bring harvesting machines in.

 

Futhermore, they have a serious short of coffee pickers because Cruz Grande is relatively small scale farm and there are not enough workers. Therefore, some ripen coffee cherrys are likely to be left without even being picked. (There is an exceptional case of El Injeto in Guatemala: they employed talented coffee pickers, who could pick only fine quality berrys, from whole world with special labor conditions in harvest time, and they have eventually won prizes at COE.)

 
 Coffee picker of indigenous woman, came here for harvesting from home village.
 

The forest of agroforestry is a last hiding place for some wild animals, including those birds in Mexico which are on the verge of extinction (there are almost 1,000 kinds of endengered birds). The indigenous people here have created their own cultures, traditions, and lifestyles in the forest. For them, this forest is very significant not only in economical and environmental respects but also social, cultural, and historical respects.


Beautifully maintenanced coffee farm.
 

As for its location, Cruz Grande is 1400m above sea level and blessed for coffee cultivation. Another farm Argovia is in 900m above the sea and not in that good condition as Cruz Grande is.

It was cleared for cultivation by German immigrants in the end of nineteen century, and now owned by the fourth Bruno Geismann. Actually, I had not known much about the farm before since it was mainly used for cultivating Robsta, which is generally used for commercial coffee (most of the Mexican one is shipped to the U.S.) and often considered to be low-grade coffee. But they had taken such excellent measures as I felt embarrased about my lack of information.

Their farm is biologically diverse enough being a good model of agroforestry, and they have a variety of systems for commercializing the coffee; aging for their traditional wodden warehouse, soil improvement with earthworms, biological waste water treatment, composting coffee refining waste, and so on. They have already adopted those systems that have been getting global attraction in recent years.

 

Mr. Geismann is an influencial figure of coffee world in Mexico.
We hadn't expected that we would be able to have him for our guide.
 
The 100-year-old storehouse moderates coffee moisture content.
 

In addition, they have positively held ecotourism to enlighten ecomovement, and gotten the organic certification of Japan, the U.S., and EU, the Raniforest Alliance Verification, and Bird Friendly verification so far.

At the end of the tour, Mr. Geismann showed us some photos of indigenous people.

"We could not do anything with only these equipments but their help."

 
Mr. Geismann showing photos of indigenous people at the end of lecture.
 

Kids' smile always tell us the importance of thinking for the future.
 

Initiating sustinable agiculture methods like agroforestry is to protect cultures, traditions, and wisdom that the ancients' have cultivated as well as to protect the biodiversity.

Although both of our activity is common in the respect of sustinability, we have learned the difficulty and importance of contenuous daily management for the future

 
 
Mitsuhiro Yamamoto
HIRO COFFEE Representitive Director
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