The Secret to Bigger, More Plentiful Coffee Beans Relies on Birds and Bees; Here’s Why

Groundbreaking new research recently revealed that coffee beans are bigger and more plentiful when bees and birds work as a team to protect and pollinate coffee plants.

Without these winged creatures, a Phys.org report specified, some that gravel thousands of miles, coffee farmers would see a 25-percent decline in crop yields, a loss of approximately US$1,066 per hectare of coffee.

That is essential for the $26 billion coffee industry, which includes farmers, corporations, and consumers who rely on the unpaid labor of nature for their morning buzz, although the study has even more extensive implications.

This forthcoming research is the first to exhibit, using actual-world experiments at 30 coffee farms, that nature/s contributions, in this circumstance, "bee pollination and pest control by birds," are larger combined compared to their contributions.

Positive Interactions

According to lead author Alejandra Martinez-Salinas of the Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center CATIE, until now, researchers have usually calculated the benefits of nature separately "and simply summed them up."

However, nature is an interacting system filled with essential synergies and trade-offs. The researchers have shown the ecological and economic significance of such interactions in one of the experiments at realistic scales on real farms.

These results from the study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, suggested that previous analyses of individual ecological services, including major global initiatives such as IPBES, may underestimate the benefits provided by biodiversity to agriculture and human wellbeing.

From the University of Vermont's Gund Institute for Environment, Taylor Ricketts explained that such positive interactions mean ecosystem services are more valuable together than separately.

Combined Positive Impacts of Bees and Birds

For this investigation, researchers from Latin America and the United States manipulated coffee plants on 30 farms, excluding bees and birds, with huge nets and tiny lace bags.

The researchers tested for four key scenarios, including bird activity or pest control alone, bee activity or pollination alone, no bird and bee activity at all, and lastly, a natural environment where birds and bees were free to pollinate and eat insects like the coffee berry borer, one of the most damaging pests that affect the production of coffee worldwide.

The combined positive impacts of birds and bees on fruit set, fruit uniformity, and fruit weight, the key factors in price and quality, were greater than their impacts, as shown in the research. Minus the bees and birds, the average yield dropped almost 25 percent, valued at approximately $1,066 a hectare, as earlier mentioned.

According to Ph.D. candidate Natalia Aristizabal, from the UVM's Gund Institute for Environment and Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, they measure such contributions to help shield and conserve the many species humans depend on and, at times, take for granted.

She also said that birds, bees, and millions of other species support human lives and livelihoods, yet they face threats such as habitat destruction and climate change.

One of the most surprising aspects of this research was that many birds that provide pest control to coffee plants in Costa Rica had migrated thousands of miles from the US and Canada, including Vermont, where the UVM team is based, a related Eurasia Review report said.

Related information about coffee plant pollination is shown on Jungle Joel Video's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Bees and Birds in Science Times.