Mora Van Cauwelaert, E.; Boyer, D.; Jimenez-Soto, E.; Benitez, M.

Coffee is produced under different management practices, land tenure systems and scales, categorized as Syndromes of Production. In particular, the so-called \"Capitalist Syndrome\" is based upon large-scale and high-density planting farms with a high input of human labor and exploitation. This syndrome results in practices, like high planting density, that may promote the development and dispersal of important pests like coffee leaf rust (CLR). It can also reflect on the spatial movement of the harvesters who could bear and disperse CLR across the plantations. However, the spatial movement of the harvesters has not yet been described, nor its relationship with the scale, management, or ownership of the plantation, and even less its ecological implications for CLR or other potential pest dispersal. Here we present a description and qualitative analysis of the spatial movement of farmworkers during harvesting in two large-scale landlord-owned capitalist plantations: an organic and a conventional plantation. We recorded and analyzed with state-space models the spatial movements of the workers during harvesting in both plantations. We then constructed a driver tree for harvest dynamics, which incorporated qualitative variables related to climate, as well as coffee plant and management aspects reported by the harvesters. Our model differentiated two kinds of movements: when trees have berries, harvesters remain in the same rows or nearby (collect state; 96% of the steps); when not, harvesters make longer steps to move to another zone of the plantation (search state; 4% of the steps). The organic plantation had a higher proportion of steps in search state (longer steps) and visited area per worker (p<0.005). This might be related to a) a lower fruit charge or ripening synchronization when we took the data or b) smaller harvesting locations or the number of harvesters per location. Harvesting movements that explore a wider area, either by visiting more trees or by changing locations on the same day, could create more foci of CLR infection across the plantation. To reduce the possible impact of human dispersal of pathogens, we suggest shorter trajectories by working fewer hours a day, avoiding harvesting at the end of the coffee maturation season when few trees have berries and harvesters have to travel longer distances, or even skipping infected plants. This calls for an organic coffee management that could prevent diseases, increase diversity, and guarantee just and safe conditions for workers.