>>I am looking for practical information on cottongrowing and coffee growing
in
a sustainable, echologic/organic way. I'm primarily interrested in the
practicalities such as how to avoid certain pests and diseases, what are the
nutrient requirements and how do I best satisfy them, what other crops are
good for intercropping or for crop rotation etc. I might mentione that I
hardly know anything about "conventional" production of these crops either
so basic information or pointers to good litterature is also welcome.<<
Coffee is a tropical understory shrub, and, like all shrubs, is a perennial.
Sustainable coffee growing can involve multi-story cropping as a taller
nurse crop can be grown, then coffee, and also a low, probably annual, crop
on the ground. I've seen coffee bushes "let go" and they show no signs of
disease or insect damage in polyculture. The polyculture depends on where
the coffee is grown and who is growing it. Tall rangy trees such as sapote
tend to be more suitable than dense, compact trees, such as many varieties of
citrus, but with flexible spacing, most tropical tree crops can be grown in
association with coffee. In some cases, for example with mango, the coffee
would be a pioneer species to be crowded out. If soil fertility is limiting,
coffee is commonly grown with nitrogen-fixing legumes. Using permaculture
design principles, a food forest can be constructed with coffee as a major
component. In this way, organic coffee becomes a cash crop for subsistence
farmers. The trick is to get them a fair price for their product instead of
the pittance usually paid by buyers for wholesalers or governments. Getting
a producers coop going and keeping it going is a much more difficult problem
than growing organic coffee.
I have less experience with cotton but I can outline the general problems and
one possible approach. Cotton is a very heavy feeder. Both the fiber and
the seed contain large amounts of nutrients. (That's why untreated cotton
rots so easily.) Moreover, the fiber and seed are attractive to insects.
Monocrop cotton is also grown with heavy applications of herbicide so that
no plant but cotton exists in the field. This tends to make insect problems
much worse. As a result, cotton growing is one of the most destructive of
land uses.
Commercial varieties of cotton are annuals. There are also perennial species
that could fit into a polyculture something like I described above, except
that cotton requires full light. Thus it cannot be grown under taller
plants. The perennial cotton seemed to tolerate arid conditions, however. A
group of associates can be worked out by the people who grow it. Again, I
think it would be best as the cash crop component of a polyculture or
permaculture on a family subsistence farm.
Another approach to the production of such fiber would be to look into other
species. I've seen trees in Mexico and Asia (Malaysia and Philippines) that
produce a hanging seed ball, something like a weird Christmas tree ornament,
which pops open when ripe, exposing a lot of fibers rather like a cotton
boll. I think it is called Kapok in Asia; I forget what my Mexican friends
call their species. These trees seem to thrive in deforested areas as
solitary or lightly populated specimens and probably can be a component of a
forestry and/or agroforestry program. Certainly if I ran into two such
species by chance, there are others. Banana leaves and spathes have an
outstanding fiber that can be woven (or made into paper). Since the plant
must be cut when the fruit is harvested (to stimulate new sprouts and thus
more fruit), there is tons of such fiber lying about. The pith of the "stem"
is edible by people or livestock and of no value for fiber. And there is
always flax.
I have to stress that I've outline just the barest hint of the information
that would have to be pulled together. If possible, I'd recommend that you
find a way to involve an experienced permaculturist, as well as local people
who have experience with various crops that might make a polyculture.
I hope that I've been helpful.
For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since
1982), Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and The Forest Ecosystem
Food Network. P.O. Box 2052, Ocala FL 34478.
"We don't have time to rush."