Agriculture and Environment: Coffee

Better Management Practices: Incorporate Fallowing Strategies

Fallowing, in conjunction with enrichment planting of cover crops to build up the soil, is another effective strategy for coffee producers and for conservation.

Through planned fallows, soils can be returned to their former vitality in a relatively short time. Fallowing can be seen as an overall investment strategy.

Improving soil health & composition
Fallowing is a way to generate nutrients at the site that would otherwise need to be purchased. It can be profitable in its own right as legumes build up soil nitrogen levels through nitrogen fixation, and other cover crops recover potassium and phosphorous that had leached to soil depths but can be brought to the surface as both deep roots and mycorrhizae are developed.

Through the development of a proper fallow plan, even future shade trees can be planted during the fallow period. In 5-7 years of careful cover cropping it is possible to rejuvenate the same area for intensive use.

This is already done with black pepper production in Japanese colonies established in the Amazon, where there is a crop rotation every 7 years.

The black pepper vines are just as healthy and productive as they were some 70 years ago when they were started in the Tome Acu area of Para state. For small-scale coffee producers, the challenge will be to do this on a rotational basis (perhaps only a few trees or 100 square metres at a time), or to plant cash crops during the fallow to reduce the impact of lost coffee income during the period of rejuvenation.