Coffee and the environment category archives
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February 17, 2009:
Green Mountain to fund climate change projects
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR's product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities (enormous, given that climate change is already...
November 26, 2008:
Pesticide resistance in coffee berry borers
The coffee berry borer, or broca (Hypothenemus hampei) is the most serious insect pest of coffee. Originally native to Africa, it has been unintentionally introduced to just about every coffee-producing nation in the world. Female beetles lay 30-50 eggs inside...
July 21, 2008:
Rainforest Alliance introduces carbon module
Rainforest Alliance will be adding a carbon module to their certification for coffee farms (presumably other crops they certify). They are also looking for further incentives to encourage farmers to plant more trees, including developing a system that would allow coffee companies to buy carbon from farmers along with their coffee beans.
May 22, 2008:
International Day for Biological Diversity
Today is International Day for Biological Diversity and the theme for this year is Biodiversity and Agriculture. The sponsor is the Convention on Biological Diversity, an international treaty initiated at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This year's...
April 6, 2008:
Sara Lee's "sustainable" coffee
Another one of the Big Four multinational roasters is jumping on the green bandwagon. Sara Lee's foodservice division is introducing its "Good Origin" line in the U.S. This line of six coffees will UTZ Certified (formerly Utz Kapeh). Sara Lee...
March 3, 2008:
Coffee farms and carbon sequestration
In my post, "Why certifying shade coffee is so complex," I ended with a comment regarding the upside-down nature of shade (or organic) certification. That is, the burden of certification costs are on the producers who are doing the right...
February 3, 2008:
Why certifying shade coffee is so complex
After visiting some coffee farms in Panama's western highlands, I have some thoughts regarding shade certification programs. I am aware that there are pros and cons of various certifications. And as I frequently note here on C&C, farms lacking certifications...
January 27, 2008:
What shade coffee looks like
One trip to one part of one county's coffee growing region is limited information to work with. Nonetheless, my recent visit to the western highlands of Panama was an eye-opener, replacing a mental image based on a great deal of...
December 15, 2007:
Habitats still destroyed for cheap corporate coffee
Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post discussing a World Wildlife Fund report revealing that robusta coffee was being illegally grown in southern Sumatra, with most being purchased by large coffee producers such as Kraft and Nestlé (press release...
December 2, 2007:
Tim Hortons coffee and the environment
If you are Canadian or live in a U.S. border state, you know Tim Hortons. This coffee and donut/fast food shop completely dominates the carry-out coffee market in Canada, with over 2,700 locations serving around 3 million cups of coffee...
October 28, 2007:
Coffee growing in Brazil's Cerrado region
Coffee growing in Brazil, in brief: Coffee was first planted in Brazil in the early 1700s. By the mid-1800s, Brazil was already the world's #1 producer of coffee, a distinction is still holds today. However, it produces a great deal...
October 15, 2007:
5 top actions coffee drinkers can take to help the environment
Today is Blog Action Day: thousands of bloggers are uniting to put a single important issue on everyone's mind. This year, it's the environment. Coffee & Conservation is all about the impact of coffee growing on the environment. Because coffee...
January 17, 2007:
Illegal coffee growing threatens wildlife, Kraft major buyer
In a well-investigated and detailed report (pdf) released yesterday, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) revealed that robusta coffee is being illegally grown in southern Sumatra, with most being purchased by large coffee producers such as Kraft and Nestlé. "Illegally grown...
December 31, 2006:
Coffee and biodiversity hotspots
The image above (click to enlarge) is from the May 2002 issue of Scientific American ("Rethinking Green Consumerism") and shows the overlap of coffee growing areas and biodiversity hotspots (defined as spots housing 44% of all vascular plant species and...
December 8, 2006:
Pesticides used on coffee farms, part 2: Common coffee pests
Coffee is equipped with an excellent defense against herbivory: caffeine. Caffeine is one of many alkaloids that evolved in various plants to prevent them from being eaten by insects. Evolution doesn't stand still, however, and some insects have fought back....
February 7, 2006:
Is promoting shade-grown coffee really a good conservation strategy?
In 2003, a number of important researchers debated the conservation value of promoting shade-grown coffee in the pages of the journal Conservation Biology. First Rappole et al. [1] wrote that if the result of promoting shade coffee resulted in the...
February 6, 2006:
What is shade grown coffee?
Coffee (Coffea sp.) is a small understory tree or shrub, and has traditionally been grown amongst forest trees, in the shade. Various studies indicate that arabica coffee has the highest yields under 35 to 65% shade. In addition, growing coffee...
February 5, 2006:
The problems with sun coffee
Coffee (Coffea arabica) is an understory tree or shrub which naturally grows in shade. In order to increase the yield of coffee shrubs and individual farms, and to prevent crop loss from coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), there was a...
February 4, 2006:
Birds and coffee plantations
Traditional, shade-grown coffee plantations harbor a diversity of many taxa -- orchids, insects, and mammals, for example. But it is the research that showed the importance of shade coffee plantations to birds that caught the attention of the public, and...
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