Coffee Estate in Antioquia, Colombia, Showing Wind-Breaks
Coffee trees as a rule produce full crops from the sixth to the fifteenth year, although some trees have given a paying crop until twenty or thirty years old. Ordinarily the trees bear from one-half pound to eight pounds of coffee annually, although there are accounts of twelve pounds being obtained per tree. Production is mostly governed by the cultivation given the tree, and by climate, soil, and location. When too old to bear profitable yields, the trees on commercial plantations are cut down to the level of the ground; and are renewed by permitting only the strongest sprout springing out of the stump to mature.
Catch Crops. On some plantations it has become the practise to grow catch crops between the rows of coffee trees, both as a means of obtaining additional revenue and to shade the young coffee plants. Corn, beans, cotton, peanuts, and similar plants are most generally used.
Pests and Diseases. The coffee tree, its wood, foliage, and fruit, have their enemies, chief among which are insects, fungi, rodents (the "coffee rat"), birds, squirrels, and—according to Rossignon—elephants, buffalo, and native cattle, which have a special liking for the tender leaves of the coffee plant. Insects and fungi are the most bothersome pests on most plantations. Among the insects, the several varieties of borers are the principal foes, boring into the wood of the trunk and branches to lay larvae which sap the life from the tree. There are scale insects whose excretion forms a black mold on the leaves and affects the nutrition by cutting off the sunlight. Numerous kinds of beetles, caterpillars, grasshoppers, and crickets attack the coffee-tree leaves, the so-called "leaf-miner" being especially troublesome. The Mediterranean fruit fly deposits larvae which destroy or lessen the worth of the coffee berry by tunneling within and eating the contents of the parchment. The coffee-berry beetle and its grub also live within the coffee berry.
Among the most destructive fungoid diseases is the so-called Ceylon leaf disease, which is caused by the Hemileia vastatrix, a fungus related to the wheat rust. It was this disease which ruined the coffee industry in Ceylon, where it first appeared in 1869, and since has been found in other coffee-producing regions of Asia and Africa. America has a similar disease, caused by the Sphaerostilbe flavida, that is equally destructive if not vigilantly guarded against. ([See chapters XV] [and XVI.])
The coffee-tree roots also are subject to attack. There is the root disease, prevalent in all countries, and for which no cause has yet been definitely assigned, although it has been determined that it is of a fungoid nature. Brazil, and some other American coffee-producing countries, have a serious disease caused by the eelworm, and for that reason called the eelworm disease.
Coffee planters combat pests and diseases principally with sprays, as in other lines of advanced arboriculture. It is a constant battle, especially on the large commercial plantations, and constitutes a large item on the expense sheet.
Cultivation by Countries