[Crops 101] How To Cultivate Coffee Cherries

Welcome to your next “Crops 101” lesson of the Farming Simulator Academy! This time, we're growing coffee cherries. Want to know how to establish a plantation, take care of the plants, and finally harvest ripe coffee cherries? Let's go!

What Is Special About Coffee Cherries?

• In case you're wondering: Coffee cherries are the ripe fruits harvested from the coffee plant, while coffee beans are the seeds found inside those cherries after they have been processed.
• Coffee isn't sown with a conventional seeder. Instead, you create a permanent plantation with rows of coffee plants.
• Coffee plants can develop fungal disease and need to be treated with fungicide once per harvest cycle.

What You Need For Coffee Cherries

Coffee cherries require some specialized equipment to work efficiently between the plantation rows. Here's what you'll need:

• Orchard tractor: Use a suitable narrow tractor to operate the tools between the rows.
• Bigger tractor: To carry the transport trailer.
• Fertilizer spreader: Recommended to increase your yield.
• Fungicide sprayer: Applies fungicide and protects your coffee plants against fungal disease.
• Coffee harvester: Harvests ripe coffee cherries.
• Overloading trailer: Collects coffee cherries from the harvester while working inside the plantation.
• Transport trailer: Transports larger quantities of coffee cherries to a selling point or production facility.

Let's Get To Work!

Step 1: Creating the coffee plantation

Start by choosing an area for your plantation and define the boundary. The game automatically calculates a suitable orientation for the rows and shows you the resulting layout. Before placing the plantation, you can adjust the angle, check the price, and fine-tune the layout until it fits your available space.

Tip! Leave enough space around the edges of the plantation to comfortably turn your machinery around.

Step 2: Fertilize your coffee cherries

Fertilizing improves the yield of your coffee cherries. Buy fertilizer from the pallets section of the shop, attach the spreader to your tractor, and fill it. Then turn on the machine, and carefully cover each row.

Tip! GPS guidance can make it much easier to stay centered between the narrow plantation rows.

Step 3: Treating fungal disease

While your coffee cherries are growing, they can develop fungal disease on their leaves – indicated by yellow spots on your plants. To keep the plantation healthy, you need to treat the plants with fungicide once during each harvest cycle, before they reach the harvestready growth state.

Fill your plantation sprayer with fungicide and drive between the rows. The KUHN AFS 600 can treat two plantation rows of coffee at the same time, so carefully position your tractor between them before activating the sprayer. Continue through the plantation until all affected plants have been treated.

Tip! If you'd rather focus on the other parts of coffee cultivation, fungal disease can also be disabled in the game settings.

Step 4: Harvest the coffee cherries

After several months, the plants eventually develop ripe, reddish coffee cherries – that's your sign that harvest time has arrived. Use a coffee harvester and line it up with the first plantation row. Its harvesting system shakes the coffee cherries from the plants, collects them and transports them into the machine's tank while separating leaves from the harvested crop.

Step 5: Overloading

Instead of driving the coffee harvester out of the plantation every time its tank fills up, you can use the narrow Colombo CTG 4500 trailer. Pull it behind a tractor and drive between the rows to unload the coffee cherries directly from the harvester inside the plantation.

Step 6: Transporting and selling the coffee cherries

Take the coffee cherries to the edge of the plantation and overload them into a larger trailer. From there, you can either sell your coffee cherries or take them to the coffee processing plant.

Processing Coffee Cherries: Products

The coffee processing plant dries the coffee cherries and packs them into coffee bags. These bags are the starting point for several additional production chains and give you plenty of options beyond selling the raw harvest: pigments, packed coffee, coffee capsules, beverages, yogurt, and delicious tiramisu!

Well Done!

Congratulations! You now know the basics of growing, harvesting, and processing coffee cherries in Farming Simulator. When you're ready, continue with the next Farming Simulator Academy lesson!