Rose-breasted Grosbeak (Photo: Seabrooke Leckie)
It’s the time of year when many of the birds we have enjoyed all summer, ‘our’ birds, make their long, perilous journey south, completing one of the most amazing feats of the natural world. Many of those birds will spend their winter on coffee plantations.
A native of Ethiopia, coffee was introduced to Brazil by the mid-1700s, and coffee plantations today cover an estimated 7 million acres in the northern Neotropics from Columbia and Brazil to Mexico. Traditionally, coffee has thrived in shaded woodlands, but in order to produce crops more quickly, sun-tolerant coffee plants were developed.
Full-sun farming requires the removal of the forest and replaces it with a virtual biological desert. Without the forest birds to eat insects, and decaying materials to feed the plants, sun-grown coffee requires the heavy use of pesticides and fertilizers. At least half of the coffee grown in the Neotropics has been converted to full sun.
Buying shade-grown coffee is probably the most important thing you can do to help save the rainforest and protect migratory birds. These days, shade-grown coffee is widely available in supermarkets and specialty stores. Sometimes you have to read the label carefully to verify that the coffee is shade-grown.
Too expensive? Don’t drink that much coffee? Here’s an easy alternative: Look for Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee. Nabob is a product of Kraft Foods, one of a few corporate giants that control 40 to 60% of the coffee market. According to the label, Nabob is currently more than 60% Rainforest Alliance Certified and working towards 100% certification.
Look for the Rainforest Alliance Frog
Still drinking instant??? Most instant coffee is made from the poorest, sun-grown beans. If you purchase an inexpensive one-cup or small-pot coffeemaker, brewing the real thing is very fast. You can enjoy a better cup of coffee and help the birds with a minimum effort. Wake up and smell the coffee! The birds will thank you.
For more information about shade-grown coffee, see my Shade the Coffee, Shelter the Birds post. For plenty of information on many aspects of coffee and habitat, visit the site linked here: Coffee and Conservation.
Ovenbird (Photo: Seabrooke Leckie)
Willow House Chronicles 
I recently learned about the different varieties at the Just Us fair trade coffee museum. Apparently Robusta, the sun-tolerant variety, is considered inferior and ‘Arabica’, the original shade variety, is the preferred flavour. So conventional coffee growers who grow Robusta for easy harvesting also mix a little bit of Arabica in to improve the flavour.
I was looking into this a bit recently, related to the cost of certified shade-grown coffees. To add to Fiddlegirl’s comment… Arabica is the better-tasting variety and therefore seen more often in higher-end or more expensive coffees. Some gourmet coffee shops won’t buy anything but Arabica. They’ve developed more sun-tolerant Arabica varieties, though none are as full-sun as Robusta. Certified shade-grown coffees are more expensive, so if cost is an issue you can look for “100% Arabica” on the label and know that the coffee is, at least to some degree, shade-grown.
Of course, as one website points out, growing coffee under the shade of one or two trees doesn’t provide much bird habitat. Some coffees are labeled with country of origin, which can be helpful. This website indicates that “Currently the predominant areas where most of the Arabica Coffee is grown beneath a canopy include Venezuela, Peru, Columbia, Central America, and Mexico as well as some areas in Africa, Indonesia, and India.”
Thanks for the info, nice post. Your ‘Shade the Coffee, Shelter the Birds post’ link doesn’t work – I think you left out the : after the http
I should add that, even where there is a full canopy over Arabica coffee, the canopy doesn’t necessarily have to consist of native trees. But any canopy, native or otherwise, will be better than no canopy at all. Still best to buy certified coffee if you can, but if you can’t for some reason, that’s an alternative.
Tom, thanks for dropping by and thanks for pointing out the link failure. I accidentally put in an extra http. Think it’s fixed now.
I would hesitate to conclude that because the can says arabica, the coffee is shade grown. I am inclined to believe that if it isn’t certified, you can draw no conclusion whatsoever as to how it was grown. That’s why I am suggesting Nabob, because it competes with all the other cans on the shelf and has Rainforest Alliance certification. Large retailers such as Tim Horton’s generally refuse to participate in Fair Trade, Organic, Shade Grown or Rainforest Alliance certification programs. You can bet that if it was easy to meet these standards, they’d be slapping a certification sticker on their label. Tim Horton’s own program emphasizes “making farmers into business men”. Huh?? They sent their CEO, whose compensation in 2009 was listed at $2,788,628.00 to teach poor farmers how to compete in an international market dominated by a handful of mega-corporations? Well, I guess he’s know. And they only source a tiny percentage of their coffee from this program, which makes no mention of organic growing or shade growing practices.
Well, yes. I think a lot of these commercial chains use robusta/arabica blends – Arabica for the flavour, Robusta for the cost. Robusta is obviously not going to be certifiable as either shade grown or organic, nor bird-friendly. Arabica, you don’t know, of course. Maybe it is one of those sun-tolerant varieties.
This post from Coffee & Conservation is interesting. It outlines the criteria used by the Smithsonian and Rainforest Alliance in certifying something as shade-grown. The interesting details are that there is no minimum number of trees per hectare required as long as the canopy cover is not less than 40%. When you think about it, 40% isn’t actually that much. Native rainforest has a canopy cover of 100%. Rainforest Alliance is also less strict about the details of the shade.
Anyway, my point was just that because Arabica typically needs some shade, it’s better than buying Robusta or a Robusta/Arabica blend. Degrees of evil. Obviously ideally you’d buy a certified brand whenever possible.
Nabob only uses 60% Rainforest Alliance certified coffee. They point out on their website that part of the trouble is in finding enough certified farms to source from. It does actually cost the farm money to get certified, and I’ve read that some farms are too small and/or poor to be able to afford the certification, even if they would meet criteria. This post by Coffee & Conservation offers some thoughts on that.
This post provides some interesting information on non-certification. And this one highlights some of the failings of the label “shade” in Costa Rican farms, and this one looks at the continuum of “shade” farm types.
I’ve spent far too much time this afternoon googling stuff and looking at links on their site considering I’m not a coffee drinker… đŸ˜‰
Rainforest Alliance used to allow certification with 30% sourced coffee. I think that has gone up to 40%, so Nabob, at 60% is ahead of the standard. The idea is that a popular widely-distributed brand such as Nabob, with 60% certified is going to have far more of an effect that a small specialty brand that is 100% certified. This is sometimes critisized as greenwashing, but as far as I could find out, Rainforest Alliance seems to have a pretty good reputation.
There are certainly lots of details you can consider if you’re interested in the big picture. If you just want a nice, ethical cup of coffee in the morning, look for some certification. Even organic is good. There are lots of good choices readily available.
What pretty birds
Thank you, doudou. Glad you dropped by.
My daughter Seabrooke is a photographer extraordinaire.
Very informative. I’ll have to check, the next time I order, to see if any shade grown coffees are sold in the Kcups that I use in my Keurig.
Louise, I had to look up Keurig. Tassimo seems to be the equivalent brand here, but I could be out of touch. Don’t know what their choices are. Fair Trade is a labour certification and doesn’t necessarily say anything about the coffee but organic is a reasonable alternative if shade grown isn’t available. At least the birds and workers aren’t being poisoned.