How coffee agroforests can play a role in ecological restoration

In 2019, when the Narmada Estate, a coffee plantation in Karnataka’s Chikkamagaluru district, decided to go organic, it began diversifying the coffee-cropping system to reduce pests.

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“The reason something becomes a pest is because you have too much of the same thing,” explains Sohan Shetty, the estate’s general manager. “So, we needed to plant as many trees as possible.”

To find suitable plants to grow alongside organic coffee, he began scouting for the best-priced plant sources, including the Karnataka Forest Department's nurseries and seed suppliers in Chikkaballapur. During his search, Shetty discovered that the Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF) had been actively restoring rainforests in Valparai, Tamil Nadu, for years, and so he reached out to them. “They were amazed at the scale with which | was thinking of starting nurseries and asked me what species | was working on.” So he shared with them the list of trees and seeds available with both the Forest Department and the seed supplier. “The botanist looked at it and said, a week later, that only three of these species are native to the Western Ghats,” he says. “That shook me. | realised that we are just planting trees for the sake of planting trees, but we are completely messing up the ecosystem.”

Shade trees in coffee agroforests can comprise a variety of species that are native to forests of the region. The species with fresh red leaves at the center of the image is Canarium strictum, which produces fleshy fruits that attract birds and a resin that is culturally and economically important.