Sixty percent of small coffee farms have suitable socio-economic and environmental locations in Rwanda

Abstract

Evaluating crop suitability is usually based on traditional land approaches in many countries, using only agro-ecological zoning and soil data. However, land use is also controlled by socio-economic and other biophysical factors. It is actually unknown how coffee suitability is influenced by such socio-economic and biophysical factors. Therefore, here, we studied all known factors that influence coffee production in Rwanda using an inventory of small holder coffee fields, including at least 200 coffee trees. We identified 29 potential factors, including demography, and environmental factors such as climate, soil and topography. These factors were reduced to 17 variables explaining 86 % of the total dataset variability, by factor analysis. The dataset was subsequently stratified into ten agro-ecological zones, yielding regional models that explain regional variability of coffee field density up to 54 %. Regional models show that 60 % of the actual coffee farms are located in suitable locations.