In Brazil, they wanted to force ants to extract coffee
Once a few years ago, Zhuan no, an ordinary farmer from Sao Paulo, went on the edge of what had once been his field and soroughly burned. From the former cultivated 230 hectares left hardly 40 – All other selected back nature.
People themselves gave her land when at the beginning of the century refused to practice the former use of pesticides. Without chemicals, brown tropical life in a matter of years swallowed the traces of human labor and even omnipresent ants appeared on former coffee plantations. Here they were attracted no attention.
In the clean air, the disappeared bees were, between the weeds, beautiful flowers were blooming, and under her feet were worn out what once allowed no to feed the family – coffee beans. Stop. These were precisely the grains, the core of the coffee tree berries, which, even after the reduction in the scale of agricultural, they still grew in former places. The berries on the trees has become noticeably less, not least because of the ants who came to break them and drag them into their Logov. Previously, before the era of pesticides, it was a big problem of coffee farms, now the ants could smear.
No stood, looked and tried to understand that he was alerted. Grains! The ants carried ripe berries, overtaken flesh, and then, as the maternity owners, thrown garbage from the house. The same grains of coffee, which constituted the main value for the entire monoculture of Coffee Sao Paulo recent years. Zhuan was not enough formed and knew that similar methods of grain production, through the stomachs of different beasts, practiced in different countries. Now here are also ants – And try what it is for the taste, so coffee?
For tasting there is no calling his longtime friend and partner, Katsuchiko Khasegav – Coffee owner of Tokyo and a passionate amateur of this drink. He purchased with selected grains from not since the 1990s and also sadly, that now everything has changed so radically. News O «Murane coffee» he led him to delight, and his hands holding the first, trial cup of drink, trembled as in childhood when the gifts unfolded. And he was not disappointed, the coffee from these grains was a complex acid-sweet taste, with notes of jasmine. Solven – need to show the outfit professional taste.
From Japan Khasegawa returned with a mass of enthusiastic reviews and a whole portfolio of orders, but no you had to disappoint him. The ants did not produce many grains, as it seemed to him, the maximum harvest was only 35 kg. It was only enough for making samples of new products, based on what long-term future contracts were concluded. A man again had to admit his defeat before nature and graciously wait for her good.
Problem in building a business on «Murane coffee» Exactly the same as everywhere in the world when it comes to the use of living beings. If you allow the little animals to select the best berries, on your animal taste, we get a great result, but in a ridiculous volume. And an attempt to increase the development, stimulate liveliness to eat more berries, will force them to consume everything in a row – grains will become more, but the quality will fall. The anthill is so complicated that it is expected to control it from the outside in half a century, but not a simple farmer. There is no reference – No one besides him in São Paulo and does not think about mining «Moravian coffee», Although many have already heard.
The most interesting thing in this story – continuation. Once there was nowhere to hurry, the Jouan’s family did not take on the study of ant addiction to coffee. And it turned out that these insects have long learned to plant grains themselves for a long time and cracks in the crust of old trees so that new ones grow new. They don’t just like ants, they need coffee trees for life and their fruits. Therefore, now there is no cherishing dream to equip a farm, where it will take care of the insects about the plantations and finally put the collection of coffee beans on the flow.
