Coffee trees have many natural enemies—chiefly vegetable and animal parasites—which mostly attack the leaves. The Ramularia Goeldiana, a parasite not unlike the Cercospora Coffeicola, is one of the worst, and undoubtedly the chief offender in Brazil, although great is the number of insects prejudicial to the trees. The most terrible of all, perhaps, are the ants and termites, such as the Termes opacus, which attack and destroy the roots of young trees. The cupim (Termes album) or white ant, and the carregador or Sauba, a giant ant with which we shall get fully acquainted later on our journey, are implacable enemies of all plants. Also the quen-quen, another kind of ant. These ants are so numerous that it is almost an impossibility to extirpate them. Various ways are suggested for their destruction, but none are really effective. Certain larvæ, flies and cochinilla, owing to their sucking habits, deposit on the leaves and branches a viscous sugary substance, which, on account of the heat, causes fermentation known locally as fumagina. This produces great damage. Birds pick and destroy the berries when ripe; and caterpillars are responsible for the absolute devastation of many coffee districts in the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo States. Other pests of the Heteroptera type attack the roots to such an extent as to cause the death of the trees.
Among the diseases of the trees are the Aphelencus Coffeæ and the Loranthus brasiliensis—the latter a terrible parasite which quickly envelops the stem and branches of the tree and ends by killing it.
The collection of the berries is the busiest process in the fazendas, and has to be performed with considerable care, for some of the berries are already ripe and dried when others hidden under the branches have not yet reached the required degree of maturity. An experienced hand can collect from 400 to 450 litres of coffee berries per day. It takes an average of 100 litres of coffee berries to produce 15 kilos of prepared coffee beans ready to be shipped. The crop is not the same every year. After one plentiful crop there generally succeeds one year, sometimes two or three, of poor—almost insignificant—collections, varying according to the care that is taken of the trees and the soil.
When once the coffee has been collected and transported to the fazenda in baskets, blankets and sheets, it is necessary to remove the skin and viscous pulpy matter which envelop the beans. This is done partly by maceration in water tanks, and afterwards by drying upon extensive flat terraces, tiled or cemented, and locally called terreiro. The process of drying by machinery has not been adopted in Brazil; principally because of its high cost. The coffee is first placed for some days in mounds on the terraces, until fermentation of the outer skin begins, which afterwards hastens desiccation when coffee is spread flat in a thin layer on the terraces. When once the coffee berries have been freed from their pulpy envelope and skin, the desiccation—if the weather is propitious—takes place in a few days. Care must be taken to move the berries constantly, so that they dry evenly on all sides, as perfect desiccation is necessary in order to preserve the coffee in good condition after it is packed for shipment.
There are two ways of preparing coffee for export—the humid and the dry. In the humid process the berries are placed in a special machine called despolpadore, which leaves the beans merely covered and held together in couples by the membrane immediately enclosing them after the skin and viscous sugary coating have been removed. Those coffees are called in commerce, lavados, or washed.
The dry process consists, after the berries have been skinned and dried, in removing part of the pulp and membrane in a special machine and a series of ventilators. They are then quite ready for export.
The preparation of coffee from the drying terraces is slightly more complicated. The coffee passes through a first ventilator, which frees it from impurities such as earth, stems, stones, filaments, etc.; from this it is conveyed by means of an elevator into the descascador, where the membrane is removed. Subsequently it passes through a series of other ventilators, which eliminate whatever impurities have remained and convey the coffee into a polishing machine (brunidor). There the coffee is subjected to violent friction, which not only removes the last atoms of impurity but gives the beans a finishing polish. The coffee is then ready for the market.
I spent a most instructive day inspecting the fazenda of Conselheiro Antonio Prado and having things clearly explained by his intelligent overseer, Mr. Henrique P. Ribeiro.
From that place I drove across country, through endless groves of coffee trees—for miles and miles—as far as the next great coffee estate, belonging to the Dumont Company, an English concern, with an authorized capital of £800,000, the estates being valued at £1,200,000. It is not often one sees an estate so beautifully managed and looked after in a country like Brazil. The buildings, the machinery, the "drying terraces," everything was in capital order. To indicate on what scale the Company does business, it will be sufficient to state that in 1911 the coffee crop amounted to 109,368 cwts., which realized on a gross average 56s. 10½d. per cwt. This crop was not as plentiful as in the previous year, when 110,558 cwts. were harvested. The gross profit for the year up to June 21st, 1911, was £123,811 2s. 5d., which, less London charges, still showed the substantial sum of £119,387 11s. 8d. There had been a considerable rise in the rate at which coffee was sold in 1911—viz., 56s. 10½d. per cwt. as compared with 41s. 8½d. the previous year; but notwithstanding the high price, the high rate of exchange, and the cost of laying the coffee down in London—which had risen on the estate by 1s. 11½d. and by 1s. 3½d. in respect of charges between the estate and London, the Company had been able to earn a profit of 20s. 4¾d. per cwt.
