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

4.2) Agricultural practices
4.2.1) State farms
State farms are the more modern plantations and are the coffee producing units the
more accurately applying agricultural practices. Some investors tend to their practices
planning but generally join garden management rules. They play an important role in the
woreda spreading as a model for all producing coffee units considering their book of practices
as a whole to reach. The Coffee Plantation Development Enterprise (CPDE) in charge of
coffee state farms regularly publishes a coffee production manual. The Limu Coffee
Plantation, a branch of the CPDE, is applying the current one which is given in annex. But
state farms and modern investors applying their practices are implied in environmental issues,
concerning contamination due to DAP and urea as fertilizers.
4.2.2) Agro-forest coffee
Illustration 21:
Suntu State Farm row
organisation of trees
(Bossolasco, 1 st July 2009)
As T. Stellmacher (2007) described in “Prospects and challenges of forest coffee
certification in Ethiopia” most peasants transplant coffee seedlings within the forest and slash
competitor plants. In general agro-forest management intensities are minimal with low labour
and almost no cash input. This coffee grows entirely organic simply because peasants can not
afford pesticides, herbicides or other chemical inputs. The yields fluctuate tremendously from
year to year with even no yield in some seasons due to the natural coffee cycle, poor
management and sometimes unfavourable weather conditions. These figures are extremely
low in comparison to more intensively managed garden production or modern plantation
systems. The agro-forest production system, or forest production system roughly speaking,
implies considerable low yields and high fluctuations from year to year and from one forest
plot to another. The coffee cooperatives in South-western Ethiopia consist of around 100 to
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