A study case on coffee (Coffea arabica): Limu Coffe - IRD

necessitates selective picking. For increased yield it requires correct spacing and appropriate
planting without root twisting, regular slashing of weeds during and just after rains, good
processing and suitable pruning (Bantte, 1995).
In fact forests and semi-forests tend to be similar to the observer sight. Wild coffee is a
paradox because it can’t preserve its wild feature once it is exploited. Let consider coffee
forests as the environment of an organized under-storey of coffee trees which, unlike semi-
forest coffee trees, are made of a bulk of local varieties (whose origin is a mother bird-planted
tree, likely to be wild, which has given seeds planted by farmers in some plots or directly
transplanted by the past). Whereas semi-forest coffee trees are made of a bulk of selected
varieties, lead by the Jima Agricultural Research Center and provided to peasants in extension
programmes by the WARDO. Here, the difference’s criterion lays on the external influence,
out of the only peasant influence transplanting trees by the past. We will designate these
coffees as agro-forest coffees to prevent confusion. Because, as an expert of the Jima
Agricultural Research Center’s breeding department told me, wild coffee exists but wild
coffee trees are rare and generally found in deep forest, out of any human exploitation.
Therefore this is not a system of coffee production.
Agro-forests are differently named because of different degrees of anthropisation:
- They could be totally constructed by introducing shade trees on previously cleared
lands but most of time they are simplified forests by elimination of trees (as Croton
machrostachyus in state farms which is considered as a bad shade tree, or as other trees cut
for shade regulation) and conservation of others (Albizia gummifera, Acacia abyssinica,
Cordia africana, Ficus vasta are the most common shade trees).
- Fauna and flora diversities are fluctuating qualitatively and quantitatively speaking.
People tend to name agro-forests in which shade trees, weeds and fauna diversity/number of
individuals is high as coffee forests, even if coffee trees are planted in rows and regularly
spaced, and as semi-forests in a lower <strong>case</strong> of diversity. For example, in Baddaa Kalloo
(Kalloo forest, Limu Kosa woreda), which is said a coffee forest, trees are planted in rows,
slashing is annually done. Coffee trees are local varieties more or less rejuvenated (stumped)
or remained mother trees (never been stumped). Oldest trees are lichen covered and 200 years
old estimated (what doesn’t have any sense in the absence of written sources). We can say
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