December 2006

Background information / Birds and other biodiversity

Coffee and biodiversity hotspots

The image above (click to enlarge) is from the May 2002 issue of Scientific American (“Rethinking Green Consumerism” pdf) and shows the overlap of coffee growing areas and biodiversity hotspots (defined as spots housing 44% of all vascular plant species and 35% of all land-dwelling vertebrate animal species). I think this handily illustrates the importance of encouraging — through our purchasing power — coffee farms that preserve habitat, do not use harmful chemicals, and cultivate coffee in a way that is as close as practical to nature.

In 2007, resolve to buy coffee that protects and and cherishes the health of the people who grow it and the environment in which it is grown.  Happy New Year.

Coffee reviews

Coffee review: National Wildlife Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #15. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

National Wildlife Federation Blend (discontinued)

The National Wildlife Federation, founded in 1938, is a very well-known conservation organization whose mission focuses on protecting wildlife. In addition to lobbying and activism, NWF promotes Backyard Wildlife Habitat for homeowners and schoolyards, and publishes the popular magazines Ranger Rick and National Wildlife.

NWF coffee is available through Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, the Vermont company that donates 5% of pre-tax earning to environmental and social causes that has a firm commitment to sustainability. Happily enough, they are equally committed to good coffee.

The NWF blend is certified Fair Trade, certified organic, and shade grown.  According to the web site, it is a blend of Central and South American coffees.  It specifies one source, the La Trinidad Cooperative in Oaxaca, Mexico. This is in the Pluma Hidalgo region, where coffee is traditionally grown under dense shade. Although it is not noted at the Green Mountain site, this cooperative of 230 small holders is or was certified by Rainforest Alliance. So far, so good!

Browsing around the other organic offerings at Green Mountain provides clues to other components of the blend. The South American portion must come from the La Florida cooperative in the Chanchamayo region of Peru. This is a large cooperative (1000 farmers) and the last data I looked at showed 167 of them were certified shade grown by Smithsonian. Central American Fair Trade/Organic coffees include one sourced from the Segovia region of northern Nicaragua from the PRODECOOP coop — grown under heavy shade. Their Guatemalan comes from the La Voz Que Clama en el Desierto coop near Lake Atitlan, an area known for growing coffee in the traditional manner.  This is coffee you can feel good about drinking.

And you will not suffer for it. This was far and away the best “conservation coffee” we tasted, and the best blend we have tried, equaling many of the single origins we have reviewed here.  The large beans were roasted to full city, medium brown with a sheen but no droplets of oil.  The beans had an interesting whiff of tobacco, as well as a fresh grassy smell.

Bright and lively, it had a nice acidic zip and zing when hot (“It’s moving around my mouth,” noted CoalTit). It got smoother and mellower as it cooled, and maintained faint hints of chocolate.  We enjoyed much more than we expected, after the other coffees, and thought this would really impress grocery store coffee drinkers and gain converts to sustainable coffee; a couple of us thought we might like it for our everyday coffee ourselves.  3.5 motmots.

Coffee news and miscellany / Corporate coffee

Genetically-engineered coffee

Nestlè, whose coffee brands include Nescafe and Taster’s Choice, has obtained a patent on a genetically modified coffee plant that will improve the solubility of instant coffee powder made from its beans. The patent also includes other aspects of the process which produces the coffee powder.

Nestlè has come under fire in the past for not labeling products that contain GE ingredients and insufficient third-party testing.  Must we take any risks for something as mundane and profit-oriented as faster-dissolving instant coffee?!

Other genetic manipulation going on by various groups working with coffee includes goals such as:

  • Simultaneous ripening of coffee cherries. Cherries would ripen to a certain point then stop; final ripening would be triggered by spraying with ethylene, at which point they could be picked by machines. To be practical, this would have to be done on short coffee varieties that also require high chemical inputs to maintain good yields.  A lot of this work is being done at the University of Hawaii, and Kona coffee growers strongly object to any GM coffee being put in the field in Hawaii, as they are concerned about the genes “escaping” and contaminating their own plants, a situation not without precedent.
  • Beans with little or no caffeine. As explained in a previous post, caffeine protects plants from pests, so “decaffeinated” plants may require more chemicals to protect them. The work I’ve seen so far is being done on Coffea canephora — robusta — which has far more caffeine than higher grade arabica beans.  This might seem like starting at a disadvantage, but the choice is no doubt due to the ability to mass-produce robusta in large, sunny, chemically-doused plantations. There are naturally-occurring low caffeine coffee varieties that are bitter and not commercially viable. Attempts to breed these traits into arabica varieties (which are not closely related) have been unsuccessful.  Recently, several mutant low caffeine arabica plants were located in Ethiopia.
  • Pest-resistant varieties.  Initially, crops implanted with proteins that are lethal to pests (usually derived from Bt) may lead to decreased pesticide application. Many transgenetic Bt crops target specific pests, and that may cut
    down on broad-spectrum insecticide application. On the other hand, other case studies have indicated that there is a lack of support for claims that GM crops result in a widespread decrease in chemical use. Pests are more likely to become resistant to insecticides in genetically-modified crops than are crops that are sprayed with pesticides.  There is also concern about impacts on non-target organisms. Since many coffee pests can be kept in check by careful cultivation and integrated pest management the risks associated with GM Bt coffee seem unreasonable.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Wild Birds Unlimited Birder’s Blend

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #14. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

Wild Birds Unlimited Birder’s Blend. Certified Fair Trade and Certified Organic. Shade grown, as determined by roaster (see the review on other Songbird Coffees for that story) from regions that typically grow in shade (Matagalpa in Nicaragua and (Lake Atitlan in Guatemala).

Wild Birds Unlimited (WBU) is the largest franchise system of retail stores catering to the backyard bird feeding hobbyist in the U.S.  The stores are well-stocked with a lot of very high quality products, and employees, while often not bird experts, are well-trained and knowledgeable about bird feeding and its apparatus. WBU funds the Pathways To Nature grants which fund projects in the National Wildlife Refuge system, and partners with various organizations to support a number of bird conservation initiatives.

One partner is the American Birding Association (ABA), and a portion of the sales of the WBU Birder’s Blend go to the ABA, since this coffee is one in the line of Songbird Coffees, one of which we reviewed here. But since many people may first encounter a Songbird Coffee at a WBU store, we thought we’d review it separately.  It also gives us a chance to try one more in this line of a number of choices.

This was described as a light roast, but it was clearly full city, with all beans shiny with oil and medium-dark brown.  The package had no roast date, but there was a decent amount of bloom in the French press, so the beans were quite fresh.  However, this is unlikely to be the case if purchased at a WBU store, which probably don’t have huge turnover.

The first sip was pleasantly citrusy, very lively and bright. It had a nice sweetness with just a hint of caramel.  I think we were all happily surprised, and we found it better than the Panama blend Songbird Coffee.  Like that coffee, it also did turn a bit bitter as it cooled, and was better in a drip machine, as it lost some of the  brightness and liveliness in a French press. It earned 2.5 motmots, and we think it would turn at least some people on to sustainable coffee, except real cheapos.

An addendum: Curiously, the package uses a portrait of the Common Yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas), a warbler that nests over much of North America.  It winters in the southern U.S. and much of Latin America from Panama north (although there are a number of resident subspecies in the tropics).  However, it is a species generally found wet areas, including marshes, reed beds, and mangroves — typical lowland habitats –not habitats where coffee is grown.  I found only a couple references to this species being found on coffee plantations (in Jamaica), where they were actually much more common in sun coffee than shade coffee.  It is certainly not a species characteristic of coffee farms.

Coffee regions / Corporate coffee

Nasty old Brazilian coffee

My inability to completely connect the dots here is a testament to the lack of transparency of the big four mega coffee roasters and where they get their beans.

Dot 1:  Brazil, the world’s #2 coffee grower, has experienced drought conditions that means their 2007 production will be at a four-year low. This on the heels of a 16% decline in the 2005-2006 crop.  Therefore, the market is tight and stocks are quite low.

Dot 2:  Brazil will be selling off its federal coffee stocks, beans from the 1977-1978 harvest.  Not a typo.  Thirty year old beans, which they contend do not lose their flavor, only their color. Unroasted beans do stay fresh a long time, as it is the roasting process that creates oils and other compounds that oxidize when exposed to air.  But coffee beans are a once-living, organic crop, and changes do take place.  Most experts advise roasting beans within a year.

Dot 3: Who buys up all these tons of old beans?  Well, Kraft is the largest buyer of Brazilian green coffee.  Nespresso, a division of Nestlé, just announced it will be purchasing 45% of its coffee from Brazil. These are supposed to be “specialty” beans, but  I have no further information.

I cannot say for sure, but I would think it is likely that the large roasters are buying at least some of these old beans, given the low stocks, high demand, and their history of using — and needing — inexpensive Brazilian beans.  If used in blends, flaws would be less apparent.  Yuck.

Blends/Multiple / Coffee reviews / Retail and specialty roasters

Coffee review: Audubon coffee

[For reference only…Audubon Coffee Club is now defunct]

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #13.  Audubon Premium Shade Grown Coffees. A review in our conservation organization coffee series.

The National Audubon Society promotes a small line of “habitat-friendly certified organic premium shade grown” coffees*, which are available at some supermarkets, and via their Audubon Coffee Club web site. All the coffees are Rainforest Alliance certified. They are distributed by Rogers Family Company, whose other brands include San Francisco Bay Gourmet Coffee, The Organic Coffee Co., Fairwinds Coffee, Cunningham’s Coffee, Pleasant Hill Farms Quality Coffee, and East India Coffee and Tea.  Rogers Family Company only buys beans from “farms that have demonstrated an interest in environmental responsibility” and in fact, owns at least two plantations.

Several kinds of Audubon coffee are offered: a Breakfast Blend, Rainforest Blend, French Roast and Decaf, and can be purchased ground or whole bean at the web site. Nowhere on the web site or package can you determine the country of origin of these coffees, much less a region or farm (although they may be sourced at least in part from the Rogers Family Panamanian farms). Nor do you get a choice of roast.  A roast level is not indicated on the package, but on the web site, away from the individual product pages, it notes that beans are “roasted to their fullest flavor point – a little darker than most coffees.” (Update: the web site is now much more thorough, and the coffees are now certified organic and 100% Rainforest Alliance certified.)

In my local grocery store, Audubon coffee was only available ground, at about $9.50 for 12 oz.  I purchased the Breakfast Blend, featuring the John James Audubon portrait of a Red-shouldered Hawk on the label.  An interesting (odd?) choice of bird, as many populations are not migratory, and those that do winter in the northern tropics are found in lowlands and avoid higher elevations, where most coffee would be grown.

The bottom of my package indicated it was distributed by JBR Gourmet Foods, Inc.  JBR changed its name to Rogers Family Company in late 2005.  I hoped this coffee wasn’t that old!

As luck would have it, there were many people hanging around the day we tried this coffee, so we had a lot of opinions. Most of us were unenthusiastic.  The most frequent comment was that it tasted over-roasted, burnt, and bitter.  Even fresh, it kind of tasted like coffee that had been left cooking in the pot too long.  It was quite acidic, but left a “hairy” feeling on the tongue. For the tasting panel regulars, it was not much beyond diner coffee.

Ergo, regular reviewers gave this coffee a very low score, averaging 1.25 motmots.  Two reviewers who frequently drink grocery store coffee liked it more, and their average score was 2.5 motmots. This was an interesting result, and indicates that this coffee might be a “step up” for ordinary coffee drinkers and convince them to switch to sustainable coffee.  However, I expect that many people would need to be farm more impressed to spend the extra money.  It is probably better fresher, or whole bean, but alas, I picked this up the way many people might — off the shelf of a busy grocery store.

I’d like to try this fresher, and whole bean, via the coffee club, or hear from folks who have tried it this way.

*There is some interesting history to this coffee. According to “Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads” (Rice and McLean, Consumers Choice Council, 1999), Audubon originally sold the very first coffee using Smithsonian’s Bird-Friendly certification criteria, around 1997. It was originally roasted by Boyd’s Coffee and called Cafe Audubon. Audubon dumped it because they were not happy with the sales and marketing revenue.