A Quick Note on the Challenges of Growing Coffee
One more note on areas in which coffee is grown: there are a couple of factors that can influence the yield of an area’s coffee-growing potential.
First, many local coffee farmers can face a lot of challenges in growing coffee because of slow yield – sometimes as long as two to five years. Their place in the world with respect to political and financial issues can also create a number of challenges for growing coffee; many underdeveloped countries often produce great coffee and could produce more if it were not for these challenges.
Other challenges faced by coffee growers include the fact that coffee plants are considered highly “parasitic” in that they absorb and demand much of the nutrients in the available soil, depleting the resources available for other plants and trees. This means that coffee plants are difficult to plant around other plants that may yield valuable crops as well. In many cases, farmers simply grow coffee because it’s so hard to grow other plants along with the coffee.
