Advantages of interplanting coffee with other crops

Advantages and disadvantages of inter cropping banana and coffee

The main advantage of intercropping banana with coffee is that the system is usually more profitable and resilient than the production of either crop grown as monocrops.

Banana provides the coffee with shade, which reduces stress on coffee due to wide variation in temperature within the coffee leaf canopy and wind damage. 

Young coffee trees grow well when grown under shade, and shade improves coffee yield and bean quality in mature coffee when moderate amounts of mineral fertilizer are used. Shade can also prevent or at least minimize the incidence of the condition overbearing dieback in coffee. Permanent shade is particularly important for Arabica coffee, especially when fertilizer use is erratic.

The banana also provides mulch to the cropping system. The mulch supports good root development for both the banana mats and the coffee trees and can improve the availability of 

potassium (K) in the topsoil, due to the large biomass turnover. 

The leaf canopy, root system and mulch provided by banana help to minimize soil losses and improve soil moisture conservation.

Intercropping reduces the risk faced by farmers when cultivating monocrops. For example, it is unlikely that both crops will be affected at the same time by pests, disease, or drought stress and market prices for both crops are generally unlikely to ‘crash’ simultaneously

Growing bananas in young coffee plantations also ensures that the farmer gets some returns from the land before the coffee reaches the productive stage.

Bananas and coffee can grow well together, but establishing the best conditions for both crops require careful management of the soil and crop leaf canopies. For example, if the 

shade provided by banana is too dense (more than 50%), coffee yields may also be reduced. 

Conversely, the yield of bananas will be small if there are only a few banana mats and coffee may be insufficiently shaded.