Birds and other biodiversity / Coffee regions

Finca El Jaguar now a model farm for sustainability in Nicaragua

Back in 2011, I wrote a post about our visit to Finca El Jaguar, located in northern Jinotega, Nicaragua, about 188 km north of the capital Managua. At about 100 ha (247 ac), it is both a private reserve registered with the Nicaraguan ministry of natural resources, and a coffee farm. It has been a real pleasure to keep in touch with Lili and Georges over the years, as well as watch their son Jean-Yves complete his education in the Netherlands and start a family.

Recently a video popped up on my social media feed — a great video of Jean-Yves discussing TreeRich, a group of coffee farms dedicated to environmental sustainability, forest and biodiversity preservation, high quality standards, and strengthening direct trade relationships (via 2cantrades), all using Finca El Jaguar as their model farm.

I couldn’t be more happy for Georges, Lili, and Jean-Yves for getting recognition and structural capacity with this project so long in the making. This is what the coffee industry, consumers, and most importantly coffeelands with all the precious biodiversity they can nuture, along with the farmers that steward them, so richly need and deserve.

The TreeRich website is well done and not only discusses the role of El Jaguar, but provides an overview of why this model is so critical in preserving biodiversity, farmer livelihoods, and even coffee itself in these turbulent times. Kudos to all involved!

Coffee news and miscellany

Sips: Site updates

First, a general housekeeping update. A couple months ago, I had to re-do the appearance of C&C due to a theme implosion. The temporary one was awful, but I’ve now tidied things up considerably. There are no doubt still a fair number of startling font sizes, misaligned bullet points, peculiar spacing, and the like, but progress has been made. As I worked on code, I also edited and refreshed posts and links. A lot of this would not be obvious unless you came upon a post in which I made updates. Thus, I will provide some highlights by resurrecting the “Sips” news briefs, and link to the older material. I’ll begin with research that has been highlighted in the excellent Daily Coffee News by Roast Magazine.

  • Daily Coffee News had a story (January 2025) about recent research confirming that the fungicides used to combat coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), known as “la roya”, have health risks to farm workers applying them to coffee in Brazil. Full use of personal protective equipment was reported by only 23% of farm workers, and health impacts revealed disruption to endocrine and metabolic functions. My posts on coffee leaf rust include this overview of the disease, the impact it has had on organic coffee, and other overall impacts. The study summarized by Daily Coffee News is cited below, and is open access.
  • Sticking with Brazil, the journal Nature Conservation (January 2026, citation below) published a lengthy and detailed review of the dire habitat destruction in the Brazilian cerrado region. I wrote an overview of coffee growing in the Brazilian cerrado, and in the ensuing years the crisis has grown. Over 55% of the native vegetation has now been destroyed. Agricultural expansion, especially in the coffee growing regions, is an important reason, although coffee is not the only agricultural product grown there. The paper provides an excellent analysis of the biodiversity of the area, which unique species are at risk, the extent and source of threats, impediments to conservation, etc.
  • Although arabica coffee is self-pollinating, cross-pollination by insects improves fruit set and yields. I’ve written several posts on this topic, including how coffee grown in shade provides habitat for pollinators, how shade coffee specifically benefits suites of bees in Mexico, and even the status of bees as pollinators of robusta coffee in India. This story, again at Daily Coffee News (January 2026) and featuring Brazilian research, summarizes the use of managed colonies of a species of stingless bees on sun coffee farms, their impact on yield (it increased), and the uptake (traces were found) in coffee leaves, pollen and nectar of neonicotinoid pesticide applied to the soil (citation below). The Daily Coffee News story also referenced another meta-study (2022) of the impacts of bees and other pollinators on coffee yield worldwide. I’ve included that citation below as well.
  • I have also written an overview of coffee growing in China, as well as an update. Daily Coffee News (Janaury 2026) summarized how models utilizing machine learning can analyze satelite images to map land growing coffee. Also cited below.
Marciano LPA, Kleinstreuer N, Chang X, Costa LF, Silvério ACP, Martins I. 2024. A novel approach to triazole fungicides risk characterization: Bridging human biomonitoring and computational toxicology. Sci Total Environ.953:176003. doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2024.176003.

Pereira, C. C., W. Kenedy-Siqueira, L. R. Maia, V. da F. Sperandei, L. Arantes-Garcia, S. Fernandes, G. F. C. Fernandes. 2026. The Cerrado crisis review: highlighting threats and providing future pathways to save Brazil’s biodiversity hotspot. Nature Conservation 61: 29–70.

Ramos JD, Santos GS, dos Santos CF, De Oliveira Kaminski TS, Cione AP, Alves DA, Quenzer FCL, Campbell AJ, Pereira AM, Thompson H, Martins de Queiroz AC, Bento JMS and Menezes C. 2026. Stingless bees in coffee: yield gains and assessing neonicotinoid impact. Front. Bee Sci. 3:1644205. doi: 10.3389/frbee.2025.1644205.

Moreaux, Céline, et al. 2022. The value of biotic pollination and dense forest for fruit set of Arabica coffee: A global assessment. Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment 323: 107680.

Huang Q, Cheng X, Chen Y, Ding X and Jia H. 2025. Coffee extraction from remote sensing imagery based on multiple features: a case study of Pu’er City, China. Front. Remote Sens. 6:1696570. doi: 10.3389/frsen.2025.1696570

 

K-Cups/Keurig brewers: alternatives

K-Cup recycling: I told you so

Encore! Here’s another piece on K-Cup recycling, published in Grist in December 2024. The (same) beat goes on.

Some years ago, I swore off writing any more about K-Cups, a product line that was antithetical to the concept of sustainable coffee.  A few years later, I did post yet another update on the lack of recyclability of used K-Cups. And here I am again, back to beat the dead horse!

Daily Coffee News reports that K-Cup owner Keurig Dr Pepper (itself owned mostly by JAB Holding and minority holder Mondelēz International) has reached settlements in Canada and the U.S. in lawsuits stemming from false or misleading claims regarding the recyclability of K-Cups. As I described in my last post on the topic, although the K-Cups are (finally) made of a recyclable material, it is #5 plastic (polypropylene), which is not accepted in all communities. The Daily Coffee News piece notes less than 3% of polypropylene plastic is recycled in the U.S., due to both logistical and capacity issues. The Canadian settlement is for US$2.3 million. The U.S. case is class action, the preliminary agreement has not yet been disclosed, and the parties have another month to begin the finalization of the settlement.

These lawsuits are separate from the antitrust/price-fixing settlements agreed to by Keurig in 2021.

Recycling plastics is a failure at best and a big con at worst. There are plenty of no-waste ways to make a single cup or whole pot of exceptional coffee. Since coffee making is often a daily occurrence, kicking the single-use pod/cup is a great step on the road to quitting plastic.

And while we’re on this pony, I have also revised and updated my post on the recycling saga of Nespresso coffee pods. That’s a product made of a completely recyclable material, aluminum, that also has a poor recycling rate for some of the same reasons as K-Cups (consumer inertia, lack of acceptance at recycling centers). I’ve tossed in Nespresso’s dirty little secret that despite all their splashy ballyhoo discussing how great their pods are because they are made of recyclable aluminum, they only just started using any recycled aluminum in their pods. And all the new aluminum they use is supplied by the nasty mining conglomerate Rio Tinto. Ugh.

 

Coffee regions / Corporate coffee / Nestlé/Nespresso

Deforestation from commodity coffee drags on

The New York Times Magazine published a well-written account about the ongoing illegal coffee growing in Sumatra’s Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. The article focuses on the Wildlife Conservation Society’s investigations into continued forest clearing in the park by small farmers who sell their coffee at rock-bottom prices to middlemen, who then sell to large coffee companies. The article notes this probe began around 2015. However, the World Wildlife Fund put out a detailed report on this issue in 2007, and a paper in a well-respected peer-reviewed journal in 2009 outlined that this problem had already existed for 30 years. Below I list all the posts in which I summarized or wrote about the illegal coffee growing (and purchasing) in this region.

The Times piece nicely laid out the complexities of the situation and the plight of the exploited farmers. The Wildlife Conservation Society concluded the certifications and traceability were not working because the supply chain was so complicated that the auditing was “too expensive for exporters specializing in cheap, bad coffee.” Nor was expelling or punishing farmers the solution, so WCS launched a program to help farmers improve their yields and livelihoods, even at the borders or within the park with the goal of reducing additional deforestation and eventually reforesting plots.

I’m not going to delve into the pros and cons of this approach, other than to say that I don’t think conservation organizations need to be in the business of agricultural extension services when the giant corporations raking in billions of dollars of profits at the expense of farmers and the environment could and should easily be funding and executing these efforts in totality*. Once again, the responsibility for ensuring environmental ethics and sustainability is fobbed off on a third party. There is no mention in the article on the importance of the “demand” side of the equation, although the author provides this brilliant and not-so-subtle hint:

The reality is that such beans are sold into the anonymity of a commodity market designed to make uniform products for placeless destinations. The point of this coffee was to forget that it had ever come from anywhere at all.

A company can decide to sacrifice profit for ethical responsibility, but only to the degree that shareholders allow them to. And it is the people who buy the products that influence the bottom line which pushes the shareholders to make a company change policies. The article, while illuminating, leaves the average reader feeling rather helpless, or at least with the impression that some organization out there is working to solve the problem.

The average reader is you, and there is something you can do to move the needle in this complex situation. It’s simple and elegant: Remember that your coffee does come from somewhere, and make the choice not to buy and support cheap, anonymized, corporate coffee.

My posts — tons of background:

*And indeed some of them are partnering with WCS to tackle this problem, such as Olam International and JDE. If you believe that corporate giants are sincere or effective in their efforts, consider Nestlé’s “zero deforestation” claim. Despite the fact that Nestlé purchases more coffee than three of the five raw products included in the plan (soy, meat, or palm oil), it was not a commodity Nestlé chose to include in this plan.