![]() ![]() Some noted that since the rust outbreak of 2013, they had been integrating more macadamia trees onto their farms, and a few other farmers, like Guillermo, noted that they had begun to dedicate certain blocks of their land just to macadamia and shade. So, should the rest of the community just clear out the coffee and focus on mac nuts? Well, interestingly, when we shared the data back with focus groups of farmers, they were not surprised that macadamia was “winning” but they were surprised by the gap in profitability between the two crops. Re-planting the former coffee plot with macadamia was simply a business decision. So the young man certainly doesn’t lack interest in the coffee trade. A group of his peers, who pool their savings in a CRS SILC group, purchased some of the best lots to roast and commercialize. During harvest season, he cups several hundred samples for his community. Guillermo was one of three young farmers in San Marcos who received their Q grade certification last year. Re-planting without coffee allowed him to plant a higher density of grafted macadamia trees (start producing in 4 years) amidst some scattered shade trees. One of the younger farmers in our project, Guillermo, recently re-planted one of his smaller plots as a mono-crop macadamia system. Some farmers whose coffee crop has been badly affected by leaf rust have placed greater focus on producing and selling macadamia nut. Although the coffee production of the participating farmers in this region is marginally profitable, they are certainly not generating enough income to think about investing mid to long term in their coffee. In fact, the profitability of a hectare of the mixed system ($2,047.00/hectare) is drug down by the razor thin margins of coffee (higher costs than mac and less income). During our second round of analysis we discovered that the monocrop macadamia system is the most profitable of the three systems (gross profit of $4,328.00/hectare). However, things get more complicated if we go beyond yields and look at gross profit. Essentially, you would need 32% more land to produce an equivalent volume of coffee (kilos of cherry) and macadamia (kilos of in shell nuts) monocropping than what is currently being produced in the mixed agroforestry systems. The results of the study indicate that a mixed agroforestry system, which includes coffee and macadamia, is indeed more productive (LER > 1) than either mono-crop system. ![]()
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