In these days of standardization in agriculture, it would be difficult for the casual observer to notice any difference between a coffee plantation in Brazil, Ethiopia or Vietnam among the predominant global centers where coffee beans are cultivated if not impossible.
A coffee tree in its natural untrained form is like a true evergreen. That means very strong vegative growth every year. If this growth is not contained the tree will yield very low quantities of fruit of a very poor quality. That means that a lot of the work on a coffee plantation involves pruning the trees, so that it won't reach heights that it will be difficult to work with. For example if not properly trained a coffee tree can grow as high as ten meters tall, where the grower prefers a maximum height of around two and a half meters, as well as the tree reaching a width and a depth of around two meters.
That’s why if you visit a coffee plantations you will see rows and rows of trees planted around three meters apart , with a lane running down the middle about two meters wide so that tractors can pass through when picking season arrives.
When they are first planted, a coffee tree will be dormant for its first four or five seasons, and during that time the grower will be kept especially active in training the tree so that the vegative growth does not get out of hand entirely.
Coffee trees will not begin to produce coffee beans until after the first bloom, and after that will continue to produce annual yields for more than a hundred years, so that all the initial care and attention will produce long term results.
Apart from the specific climate and terrain conditions that can be a major factor in running a successful coffee plantations, labour costs are no less an important factor. Despite the advances in agricultural technology, the need for hand pruning and picking is still very prevalent in coffee plantations throughout the World, and countries where labour costs are high will find it difficult to compete, unless they specialize in cultivating the less specialist yet is the hardier Robusta variety of bean which can be harvested by machine stripping, where all of the coffee cherries are " stripped" from the tree in one swoop irrespective of whether they are fully ripe or not.
Some plantations in countries where the temperatures get very high in the summer and have sufficient water supply, use a sprinkler irrigation system to both irrigate and cool down the roots of the trees during hot spells. The same system can be brought into play during the winter when there is risk of frost damage.
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