Sustainable coffee is produced on a farm with high biological diversity and low chemical inputs. It conserves resources, protects the environment, produces efficiently, competes commercially, and enhances the quality of life for farmers and society as a whole.
                                                      -- Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, First Sustainable Coffee Congress.

McDonald’s makes substantial commitment to coffee sustainability

March 19, 2013

mccafeMcDonald’s Corp. recently announced that their North American operations is investing $6.5 million over  4.5 years to provide technical assistance to Guatemalan coffee farmers to increase their capacity for sustainable coffee production. McDonald’s is partnering with the non-profit TechnoServe (which coordinates many coffee-related projects) and SCAN (Sustainable Commodity Assistance Network), a global consortium of 20 organizations that provide an array of support for sustainable agriculture practices. This is another component in the sustainability efforts of the Golden Arches, a number of which are directly related to coffee. These include:

  • All coffee in the U.K. is from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms (since 2007).
  • All coffee in the rest of their 39 European markets is from Rainforest Alliance-certified or UTZ Certified farms (since 2007).
  • All coffee in Australia and New Zealand is from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms (since 2008-2009).
  • All coffee for espresso-based drinks in the U.S. is sourced from Rainforest Alliance-certified farms (as of March 2013).
  • All coffee for espresso-based drinks in Canada must be certified by a third party, and is currently 100% Rainforest Alliance.

To get an idea of why I find this so significant, we need put all of this in perspective by comparing it to the largest coffee buyer in the U.S., J.M. Smucker Company.

McDonald’s is a fast food restaurant. They do not directly source or roast coffee (it comes through suppliers). Coffee is not their core business, but makes up just 6% of U.S. sales for the company1. Smucker’s is a food manufacturer that owns the coffee brands Folgers, Millstone, Dunkin Donuts bagged coffee, Café Pilon, and Café Bustelo. Coffee makes up 44% of their U.S. sales.

McDonald’s certified coffee purchases in 2011 — Rainforest Alliance, UTZ, and Fair Trade — were about 10,400 metric tons, with three-quarters of it being Rainforest Alliance-certified. Although the McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. lag behind European markets in offering certified coffee, the company expects to buy around 3800 tons for the domestic market.  Not a lot, but more than Smuckers (1500 tons) and Nestlé (2000 tons) total certified global purchases combined!

The most recent McDonald’s pledge amounts to $1.4 million a year to provide sustainability support to coffee farmers. That’s 0.06% of it’s annual coffee sales of about $2.1 billion on U.S. systemwide sales of just over $35 billion. That doesn’t sound like much until you realize that Smucker has opted to support TechnoServe at $150,000 annually2, or 0.006% of its annual U.S. retail coffee sales of $2.3 billion.  And, as I like to remind everyone, J.M. Smucker has a dismal environmental sustainability record, and less than 0.5% of the coffee it buys each year carries any type of certification whatsoever.

mcd-love-1

Head on over to McDonald’s “Let’s Talk” web site where you can take a look at blog posts on their environmental sustainability projects and leave your comments. Let them know you appreciate their efforts and would like to see more eco-certified coffee in the U.S.

1Figures provided to me by McDonald’s and are the most recent available; total global coffee purchase information not available at this time. The Nestlé and Smucker figures are based on the most recently available data — both of those companies are very guarded about releasing any information to the public. In contrast, McDonald’s was helpful and forthcoming about giving me this data, and also has extensive information at their web site.

2This figure is based on statements made by Smucker’s regarding a continuation of support provided to TechnoServe by Proctor & Gamble, which sold its coffee brands to Smucker. The last time donors were listed in TechnoServe’s annual reports was 2009, and Smucker was listed as a donor in the $100,000 to $499,999 level. I wrote to TechnoServe to verify the amount of support they received from Smucker, but did not receive a reply. I’m sure if Smucker had upped the ante, they’d brag about it, because their 2013 Corporate Responsibility Report touted this relationship…by highlighting the work TechnoServe had done with 170,000 coffee farmers, making it sound as if Smucker should receive lots of credit. TechnoServe receives $3.1 million in corporate and foundation support alone.

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Revised on March 20, 2013

Posted in Corporate coffee,Rainforest Alliance

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New orchid species named for coffee company

March 7, 2013

puro-orchid-1A new species of orchid, Teagueia puroana, was discovered in central Ecuador in the eastern Andes, and named for the Puro Coffee company.

I was once active in orchid growing and writing for the American Orchid Society, so when I read about an orchid discovered with a coffee connection, I was naturally interested. This orchid was discovered in 2002 in the Cerro Candelaria Reserve, a nearly 3000-ha area protected through a partnership between Fundación EcoMinga and the World Land Trust.  Since 2005 when the brand was launched, Puro Coffee, the Fairtrade coffee brand of Belgium-based Miko Coffee, has contributed 2% of the retail price from each bag of coffee sold to the World Land Trust for the protection of rainforest. To date, this funding has helped purchase over 3200 ha in Ecuador, Brazil, Colombia, Borneo, and Guatemala. In honor of this support, the new orchid species was named Teagueia puroana. The official description of this new species was published in 2011 along with another new Teagueia species in the journal Lankesteriana.

Teagueia is a genus in the orchid subtribe Pleurothallidinae, a group of mostly miniature New World orchids usually found at high elevations. Despite their small size and specific, fussy cultural demands, Pleurothallids are popular with orchid aficionados for their fragile and delicate beauty. Until recently, only six species of Teagueia were known. Now over two dozen species have been discovered (along with new representatives of other orchid genera) all in the same Rio Pastaza watershed, many on Cerro Candelaria. The effort to map the distribution of orchids in this region was spearheaded by botanist Lou Jost.

After the discovery of the Teagueia on Cerro Candelaria, Jost and some of his colleagues founded Fundación EcoMinga, and obtained funding through the World Land Trust to establish the preserve. So far, Cerro Candelaria is the only place T. puroana has been found. It lives on the stunted trees in the alpine grasslands known as páramo at 3700 meters. While some of the new Teagueia are abundant as creeping ephiphytes on low vegetation and mosses on different nearby mountains, T. puroana is very rare, with only a few plants located despite much searching.

While this is the first orchid I have heard of named for a coffee brand, orchids are often important components of shade coffee farms, and shade coffee farms can be important refugia for orchids.

puro-miko-logosMore on the coffee

Miko Coffee, part of the Miko Group, was founded as a grocery business in 1801, with coffee roasting becoming its main business around 1900 (plastic food packaging is the other main activity of the Miko Group). Miko coffee primarily focuses on the  “out of the house” market, providing beans, equipment, and related products for food service, restaurant, and office coffee in over 20 countries, mostly in Europe and Asia. Retail coffee is a relatively small portion of their business, and Puro Coffee is their Fairtrade and FT/organic/ethically-sourced brand.

Puro offers three different blends. The current compositions are given below, but they sometimes change. Puro provides updates on their web site, so you know what you are getting.

We tried all three coffees, provided to us by Puro. Our expectations were not sky-high, as we most often drink single origins and find the more generic blends nice but not as interesting (especially to the more jaded panel members).  We were pleasantly surprised.

3.5motmotThe Organic blend was everybody’s favorite. Two adjectives were mentioned by nearly all reviewers: “smooth” and “milk chocolate.” Soft and creamy also came up. Personally, I usually don’t like Peruvian coffees too much, because the catimor variety is commonly grown there and I find I seem to be able to taste the chemical flavor of the robusta heritage. CEPICAFE, however, grows 95% typica, and the sweetness came through. When prepared in a Clever coffee dripper, we additionally found an initial hit of cinnamon and spice which we also enjoyed. Overall, this coffee earned 3.5 motmots.

3newmotWe approached the Noble with some trepidation due to its robusta content. We were all surprised we could not detect any hint of rubbery, chemical flavor familiar to us from other robusta offerings we’ve tried, and least when the coffee was fresh and hot. The flavor deteriorated a little bit as it cooled. Overall, we found it very similar to the Organic blend, just not as bright. This lack of some liveliness and the flavor change when cool dipped the score to 3 motmots.

2newmot75Upping the robusta content to 50% was clearly the tipping point for us, as nobody was really enthusiastic about the Fuerte blend. I’m really not sure exactly what was going on here, as some of the flavors our more experienced tasters were finding seemed beyond the usual bold, rubbery type of flavor that is a more normal characteristic of robustas. In a French press in particular, it seemed dirty and oddly astringent, with a most peculiar flavor/aroma that reminded me of rubbing alcohol. Not sure what might have caused this. Medicinal flavors can come from over-fermented beans; perhaps this batch may have had some bad beans in it, as it seemed at odds with what must be a really well-processed robusta from the CDI Bwanmanda group in Congo. Some grocery-store-coffee drinkers we dragged into this panel didn’t really detect these flavors; perhaps it might also be more suitable for an espresso prep than a drip. This blend ended up with 2 motmots.

Right now, Puro Coffee does not have a U.S. distributor, but a new web site for online purchases is being rolled out in multiple languages: Puro at Home. Their U.S. brand home page has an almost overwhelming amount of information. The Puro blog is an especially good source of information on their rainforest and habitat projects (e.g., cool moths and beetles in Brazil, giant monkey-eating eagles in Ecuador). There is also an entire page with links to the many short videos they’ve created on their coffee, rainforest projects, social initiatives, partnerships, and worldwide clients.

I have found that some coffee companies that support a cause as strongly as Puro Coffee does the World Land Trust tend to focus more on the cause than the coffee. Puro is certainly an exception to this: very committed to the cause of conserving rainforest and sustainably-grown coffee, and very satisfying coffee as well.

Jost, L., and Shepard, A. 2011. Two new species of Teagueia (Orchidaceae: Pleurothallidinae) from east-central Ecuador. Lankesteriana 11(1): 9-14.
Photo courtesy of Puro Coffee. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Birds and other biodiversity,Blends/Multiple,Coffee reviews

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You’re paying WHAT for single-serve coffee?

February 16, 2013

The high cost of K-Cups and pods

There are two reasons people give for using single-serve coffee: convenience and price (the rationalization for the latter is that otherwise too much coffee from a pot is thrown away and wasted).

Here is the straightforward truth about what you are paying by using single-serve. The amount of coffee in a pre-packaged single serving varies; I’ve given some common examples. If your single-serve pod, cup, or pack isn’t listed, dismantle one, weigh the coffee and put the amount in the appropriate cell in the spreadsheet.

If you don’t feel like looking up the typical box of K-Cups, here are some examples:

Green Mountain Sumatran Reserve Coffee Extra Bold K-Cups- 18 Count – $11.99 at Bed, Bath, and Beyond = $27.47/lb ($0.67 per cup)
Folgers Gourmet Selections Coffee K-Cups, Lively Colombian Regular – 12-Count (Pack of 3) – $22.86 at Amazon = $32.00/lb ($0.63 per cup)
Dunkin Donuts Original blend K-Cups – 14 count – $17.95 at Dunkin Donuts stores = $64.62/lb ($1.28 per cup)
Nespresso capsule variety – 50 count – $50.00 on  Amazon = $82.47/lb ($1.00 per cup)
Maxwell House Mild Morning Tassimo T-Disks – 14 count (pack of 2) – $19.98 = $40.46/lb ($0.83 per cup)

So, the price per pound is ridiculously high (I was astonished to find, when researching this post, that some people buy K-Cups using food stamps!!!). What about the argument that K-Cups are cheaper since no coffee is wasted?

As noted in my latest annual summary of coffee cost for my two-person household, the four-year average — including many great coffees and shipping — is $20.53/lb. If I made two cups of coffee a day at $20.53/lb, at the standard 11 grams per 6-ounce cup, I’d spend $363 a year.  If I used two extra-bold (11 gram) K-Cups a day at the cheapest example above, I’d need forty 18-count boxes and I’d spend $479. I save $116 a year. At $0.50 a six-ounce cup (my four-year average), I’d have to waste nearly 11 gallons of coffee to spend as much as I would on K-Cups in this example. That’s tossing away a cup of coffee from a pot nearly every day 8 months of the year.

What about convenience?

kettle-clever

The solution to the waste issue is, indeed, to brew only the coffee you’ll drink. Rather than buying a $150 Keurig brewer, buy a Bodum 17-Ounce Electric Water Kettle for $40 which boils water in 4 minutes (getting it to the correct temperature, unlike most coffee pots or single-cup brewing machines). Then get a foolproof Clever Coffee Dripper for $22 (you can make up to three six-ounce cups in it, if you wish). A year’s supply of paper filters would set you back less than $50 and can be composted (your 2 K-Cups a day amounts to 8 pounds of crap in a landfill a year).

Is this also a huge hassle? Start to finish, brewing a K-Cup takes about 3 minutes, mostly because the water doesn’t reach a high enough temperature nor is it in contact with the coffee for enough time for proper extraction. To make one to three cups in your Clever takes about 8 minutes (four for the water, four for the brewing; detailed how-to here). For those extra few minutes, you save money and you get better coffee even if you use pre-ground coffee put in the filter the night before and accidentally let it steep for too long. For every “upgrade” you make (better quality coffee, grinding your own beans, paying attention to timing) the improvement in quality will be substantial.

 

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Posted in K-Cups/Keurig brewers: alternatives

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Sips: Coffee rust crisis

February 9, 2013

320px-Hemileia_vastatrix_-_coffee_leaf_rust

Wikipedia

A round-up of the many stories and news items about the devastating impact of the fungus Hemileia vastatrix (coffee rust, roya). Central and South America are experiencing the worst outbreak in decades.

This crisis has some serious consequences beyond the obvious impacts of increasing consumer prices and endangering the survival of some producers.

One is a decrease in the number of producers that will stay with organic certification. Most of the fungicides that are used to combat rust are allowed under organic certification. However, coffee plants attacked by rust need substantial boosts in nutrients (because they lose their leaves) in order to keep them alive. These levels are often just too hard to achieve at reasonable prices with available organic fertilizers. Recall that in the last few years, many farmers have already given up on organic certification because the price premium is just not enough to justify the extra cost and labor.

 

 

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Revised on March 13, 2013

Posted in Coffee news and miscellany

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