Ivette Perfecto, University of Michigan professor in the School for Environment and Sustainability, points to a nest of Solenopsis invicta, a species of ant that lives on a coffee farm in Puerto Rico. Credit: University of Michigan
As we all sip our lovely, traceable, single-origin, impeccably processed, roasted and brewed coffees today, consider the fact that there is no-holds-barred chaotic insect warfare where the coffee was grown.
Two pioneering figures in the study of coffee-growing systems — Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer of the University of Michigan — recently published a study that sheds new light on that farm-level chaos, while hopefully illuminating pathways forward for pesticide-free coffee farming.
“We believe that the current international agricultural system, with its use of pesticides and chemicals is not contributing to the welfare of anybody, especially the farmers, and is actually contributing quite a bit to global climate change,” Vandermeer said in an announcement from the university. “We take the position that in order to incorporate the rules of ecology into the development of new forms of agriculture, we need to understand what those rules are and how those rules work.”
A coffee plant showing signs of leaf rust. Daily Coffee News photo by Nick Brown.
Towards that understanding, Vandermeer and Perfecto recently explored predator and prey interactions of three different types of ant species and a predatory fly species on coffee farms in Puerto Rico. They found that the predator-prey interactions were so complex that predicting which of the four insect species will dominate at any given time becomes nearly impossible.
This chaos is fueled by what the researchers described as “intransitive loop cyclic behavior,” which is essentially a biological version of rock-paper-scissors where Ant A dominates Ant B, Ant B dominates Ant C but Ant C can dominate Ant A. The interactions were even more chaotic when the predator fly was added to the mix.
This potentially presents a challenge for coffee farmers who may seek environmental pest controls, such as promoting the specific ant types that prey upon common coffee pests.
“The good news is that the chaotic patterns of the insects are really very interesting from an inherent intellectual sense,” said Vandermeer. “The bad news is that it’s not really as simple as it might seem to base agricultural practices on ecological principles, because the ecological principles themselves are way more complicated than simply finding a poison that kills the pests.”
The study was published Aug. 11 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Nick Brown
Nick Brown is the editor of Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.
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