Devouring profit - International Coffee Organization

which is in fact the cheapest component of all. This is not a desirable combination; if
chemical control is regarded as both effective and cheap, it may well encourage farmers
to choose this component over others. Nevertheless, chemical control is considered
the most dangerous for both the environment and human health.
In the meeting we convened in Agua de Piedra, coffee farmers were asked how they
ranked in importance the different IPM components, results appear in Table 17.
Table 17. Ranking of importance of CBB practices. Agua
de Piedra farmers.
As can be deduced from Table 17, the collection of coffee berries is the most important
activity carried out in CBB management by these coffee farmers. This is an encouraging
result because they do not consider the use of insecticides before trying
cultural control. However, we cannot ignore that these very resource-poor farmers
mostly lack spray equipment.
3.2.4 IPM in Guatemala
The recommended CBB management strategy is based on several components (Campos
et al., 1998). Sampling methods should be used to support control decision-making.
CBB sampling should start 90 days after the most important flowering in order to
know both the infestation level and to identify infestation “hot spots” in the coffee
plots. Manual control is the second component. This is based on the collections of
remaining berries after harvesting on both coffee tree and ground. Also, new perforated
fruits from the new harvest should be removed from the plot. Biological control
is implemented by using the parasitoid Cephalonomia stephanoderis. This natural enemy
of CBB should be released from the finishing of the harvest up to the beginning
of the new one (January to September), but so far this recommendation is made only
for large plantations.
Accurate information about IPM uptake at a national level was hard to accurately
assess. We suspect that most large estates still use significant amounts of chemical
insecticides under an IPM framework whereas smallholders use much less. The CFC
project concentrated on one community of smallholders and, although this may not
be representative of Guatemalan smallholders in general, an account of CBB management
there now follows.
CBB Management in the Chocola Community: a survey was carried out here in
1998, when coffee farmers were asked about CBB management. The findings were
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