The qualitative dataset is about coffee pests based on the ancestral knowledge of coffee farmers in the Department of Cauca, Colombia. The dataset has been obtained from a survey applied to coffee growers with 432 records and 41 variables collected weekly from September 2020 to August 2021. The qualitative dataset includes climatic conditions, productive activities, external conditions, and coffee bio-aggressors. This dataset allows researchers to find patterns for coffee crop protection by means of ancestral knowledge not detected by real-time agricultural sensors. As far as we are concerned, there are no datasets like the one presented in this paper with similar characteristics of qualitative value that express the empirical knowledge of coffee farmers used to detect triggers of causal behaviors of pests and diseases in coffee crops.