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1. Carry out the national strategy of coffee planting (such as the The role of the owner of coffee manor
proportion of coffee trees should reach 10% of the amount of Following FNC, we visited two farms located in Calda.
plantation), check if the new variety of coffee tree is the kind The owner told us that there are more than 5 hectares of pro-
that FNC promote and so on; duction area and over 25,000 coffee trees. The yield gained
2. Train coffee farmers for their coffee plantation (such as pro- 72,000 kg of coffee cherry and 15-ton green bean last year.
motion of the varieties of tree, the yield of coffee tree) According from the amount of production, it seems the coffee
3. Organize the society for coffee farmers (such as specialty industry has developed in Colombia.
coffee planting society) After that we met households of coffee farmers who
4. Make financial planning for coffee farmer worked in the coffee industry for three generations. This made
5. Apply a loan (filling in the form, financial management, plan- us understand the significant role that owners of coffee planta-
ning, and so on) tion played as a big role in production chain. In the early 19th
6. Operate and cost control in coffee plantation century, his grandfather began to plant coffee trees and now
7. Pass on and share resources information (such as the domes- he became the third generation as the owner of the plantation.
tic government, central government, provincial government At the same time, he begins to coach his daughter (the fourth
and district government); generation) to engage in management. Looking at his girl, we
cannot expect the production of a new generation.
There are many coffee policies carried out in Columbia In 365 days or a year, the owner of coffee plantation
and benefit for farmers by financial law. The policies are passed will spend 40 weeks in managing coffee trees, including weed-
through coffee technical specialist. At the same time, interna- ing, fertilizing, checking the health of the trees, paying attention
tional nongovernment organizations will supply resource to to weather, growing a coffee tree and disposing the old trees.
coffee farmers. For example, the coffee technical specialist from After we visited this two coffee plantations’ owner, we found
Rainforest Alliance Certified provides a free financial assistance that they faced the different experience in their coffee planta-
for coffee farmers to encourage the coffee farmer to reborn tion. So, we conclude the valuable information as following:
their new coffee trees.
1. Observation and management of climate
The life of coffee farmers in the whole world is decided
by weather, Colombia is no exception. However, the length of
rainy season and dry season exerts as the largest influence on
harvest. For the growth of coffee trees, rainy and dry season can
be decided as the length of branch and flowering period. The
longer the rainy season is, the longer the branch, and vice versa.
When the rainy season is over and dry season comes, there is
a blooming of a flower on a coffee. For example, when La-Nina
happened, rainy season is longer than usual, the branches keeps
growing instead of coffee’s flower. As a result, it sharply de-
creases in the output of coffee cherries. Therefore, proper rain
and drying season is necessary for coffee yield and harvest.
2. Pruning and cutting stem
To maintain the vitality and output of coffee trees,
there are 10% of coffee trees that needs to be replanted every
year. The methods for replanting include cutting stem (pruning
the main stems to make it grow again) or felling the old tree
totally. If cutting stem is adopted for renewing tree variety,
the owner will leave two leaf buds in the two sides of stem, to
avoid the lacking of nutrition in the early period of growth. The
branches of old tree that stems are cut can also be used as fertil-
izer for new tree variety. It can also be used to avoid water and
soil erosion.
3. Cut out an old coffee tree can control of bark beetle
The decision in replanting of coffee trees includes fell-
ing old trees properly which contains an accumulate for three
generations in many plantations. For example, old trees always
attract the bark beetle (the common pest in coffee trees com-
monly known as Broca). If we cut down the old tree in time,
thousands of bark beetle will move to a new tree which become
a disaster for the coffee farmer. So when the farmer cut out old
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