Coping with coffee on the coast

This farmer had 5 500 coffee trees on 2,5ha, twice the usual planting density, and believed that South Africa could ultimately produce enough coffee to meet local demand.

One of the most costly aspects of a coffee plantation is labour for picking the berries and for pruning or cutting back the trees. But a former Tanganyika (now Tanzania) coffee farmer is confident he has found the answer to part of this problem, although his scheme is a little unusual.

First, Bob Kotowicz of Wolmar Farm, Munster, on the Natal South Coast, has the distinction of establishing probably the most southerly coffee plantation in South Africa, now that the coffee trials in the Transkei have been ploughed up. He is also farming coffee right on the coast, despite unfavourable weather. The chief problem is wind. He is also growing coffee in a frost zone, which could be detrimental to the crop and trees. However, he stresses that the frost is not severe enough to cause much damage, though he has experienced one severe black frost.

Kotowicz has 20ha of bananas, all Cavendish variety, but his heart is in coffee, and he is determined to make a success of his coffee venture on the coast.

Coffee likes fairly well-drained soil, and at present he has 2,5ha of fully laden trees on flat land. Banana trees are used as windbreaks. In most instances there are two rows of coffee, and then a row of bananas followed by another two rows of coffee, and so on.

HIGHER DENSITY

On the 2,5ha Kotowicz has no fewer than 5 500 trees. Instead of planting at the normal spacing of 3m x 3m, he has put the trees closer together at 3m x 1,2m. Despite their closeness they are not allowed to grow into a hedge, as every odd tree is stumped back when three or four years old.

“They will be stumped down to 450mm, then allowed to grow unmolested for two years when the even trees, those on either side of each stumped tree, are stumped down too,” explains Kotowicz.

This gives him the advantage of growing a crop on new wood, which means little or no pruning. The trees are also kept down to a manageable height, being allowed to grow no higher than 2,4m.

The normal practice is for coffee trees to be pruned, chopping off the bottom branches and picking from the crown.

“But the trouble is that the crown is always getting higher and higher, so it becomes more difficult to pick,” he says.

With his system, labourers do not have to struggle around the plantation with a number of ladders; they are able to pick the berries with little effort.

CULTIVATION

Kotowicz obtained coffee seed from

D van Senga of Umzumbe in Natal, once regarded as one of Tanzania’s top coffee growers. When a year old, the seedlings were planted out in virgin soil, which had been ploughed and subsoiled. The land was limed at a rate of 1t/Ȳha and fertilised with 500g/ha of nitrogen and 400g of potassium chloride.

“The best time to plant is between October and December,” says Kotowicz.

At the same time, the rows of bananas were planted as windbreaks. Now the bananas are bearing well beside the coffee trees. The coffee trees are so heavily laden – they are not three years old – that many of the beans on the new growth have to be stripped off. If they were allowed to get big, their mass would break the branches, especially when blown by strong winds.

Natal’s original coffee industry came to an abrupt end several decades ago when Hemileia disease, a destructive fungus, spread rapidly from one plantation to another. In those early days there was no known cure or preventive treatment for the disease, so coffee was not revived as a crop until many years later.

Kotowicz sprays a chemical cocktail, including a foliar feed for the coffee, on the trees every six weeks. In the cocktail is an insecticide that kills all insects likely to attack the trees or berries, and copper chloride to prevent Hemileia disease.

His spraying programme costs between R70 [R1 800] and R100 [R2 600] a year and he fertilises the soil once a year according to recommendations from soil and leaf analyses. He expects a yield of about 1,5t/Ȳha when the trees are four years old.

Kotowicz already has pulping machinery for processing the coffee, and next plans to install a hulling machine.

Rand values have been adapted for inflation. This article first appeared in the 14 January 1981 issue of Farmer’s Weekly and has been edited to adhere to the current style of the magazine.

FW ARCHIVE Bob Kotowicz in his coffee plantation on the South Coast, showing the protective hedge of bananas on both sides of two rows of coffee acting as windbreaks.