October 2007

Coffee news and miscellany

Coffee husks as biofuel

Dutch energy company Essent is the first company in the world to introduce the use of coffee husks as biofuel. The source will be Brazil, and the husks will be used to produce electricity in some of Essent’s power stations — in the Netherlands.

The husks* of this year’s harvest (estimated at 5000 tons) will be compressed into pellets and used at an Essent power station in the southern part of the Netherlands. If this works out well, another 20,000 tons will be used. Brazil could potentially produce upwards of 150,000 tons of coffee husk pellets for use annually.

On the surface, this is an appealing use of a by-product of coffee processing, but I see a few problems.

According to Essent, the use of coffee husks as biofuel could result in a CO2 reduction of at least 90 per cent. That seems remarkable. How much (carbon-emitting) energy does it take to produce the pellets?  Or more critically, how much energy and emissions are used to ship that many tons of coffee pellets from Brazil to the Netherlands?

Essent is committed to using as much biomass as possible for the production of energy.One of the company’s conditions for biomass selection is that the production of the biomass must not have any negative consequences for the food and animal feed chains, biodiversity, or economy of the countries from which the biomass comes. As we have seen in our previous post, coffee production in Brazil does indeed have significant negative impacts on the biodiversity of the country.

All coffee processing by-products are not entirely waste. Coffee pulp makes up 25% or so of the entire coffee cherry. It contains caffeine and other compounds and thus can be a bit tricky to re-use. However, it is often composted and used as mulch or organic fertilizer. Dehydrated, pulp can also be used as livestock or fish feed. Coffee hulls, on the other hand, make up less of the cherry (15%) and are already utilized in other ways. Compressed, they have been used to make logs that can be burned, bricks
used as building material, or pellets used in animal feed.

Finding further uses for coffee processing by-products close to production areas is an excellent goal. And it would seem that using coffee husks as biofuel would make a hell of a lot more sense if it was done in Brazil (or domestically in any coffee-producing nation) rather than transporting tons of them halfway around the world.

*Presumably what is meant by “husks” is the coffee parchment. The by-products produced when coffee cherries are processed are the skin and pulp, and the thin parchment covering the two beans (the parchment has a mucilaginous coating itself). The parchment is often referred to as the “hull,” is high in cellulose, and is therefore combustible.

Coffee and the environment / Coffee regions

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 it still holds today. However, it produces a great deal of low quality arabica, as well as quite a bit of robusta. With so much invested in the coffee market, Brazil was in trouble during the coffee crisis of the 1990s. It turned to increased technification (high-density sun coffee, chemicals, and mechanization) to increase productivity. About 70% of Brazil’s coffee is technified coffee, much to the detriment of the environment in many places.

There are three main growing regions in Brazil. Mogiana is along the border of Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais states. Sul de Minas is a more hilly/mountainous region in southern Minas Gerais state.  Here, we will discuss coffee growing in the Brazil’s cerrado region, mainly in Minas Gerais, as it is a primary area where Brazil’s specialty coffees are grown.

The Brazilian Cerrado: A biodiversity hotspot
The cerrado, consisting of grassy savannah, scrub lands, and gallery forest, is found on the high, flat, central plateau of Brazil. It covers over 2 million square kilometers — three times the size of Texas. Portions extend into Bolivia and Paraguay, making it the largest woodland-savannah in South America, and the richest savannah in terms of biodiversity in the entire world.

The World Wildlife Fund states it plainly: “The biodiversity of cerrado is extraordinary.” Nearly 45% of the 10,000 plants species found in this region are found nowhere else on earth. Almost 20 of the 800 bird species are endemic, such as the critically endangered Blue-eyed Ground-Dove (Columbina cyanopis). There are numerous unique mammals, reptiles, and amphibians as well. The Maned Wolf (Chrysocyon brachyurus), South America’s largest canid, is an iconic mammal of the cerrado.

Since the 1960s, vast areas of the cerrado have been destroyed. Over 40% of the original cerrado area has already been converted to agriculture (especially soy and sugar) and livestock (40 million cattle), with 67% of the land having been modified in some major way. The world demand for biofuels is now increasing agricultural conversion in the cerrado. Less than 2% of its region protected in national parks and conservation areas.

A recent article in the New York Times (Scientists are making Brazil’s savannah bloom), notes that the cerrado “has been transformed in less than a generation into Brazil’s grain belt, thanks to the discovery that soils could be made fertile by dousing them with phosphorus and lime.” Coffee has only been grown here for around 40 years, but the cerrado now supports around 3000 farms, mostly in small holdings.

Coffee growing in the cerrado
As indicated above, soil in the cerrado is quite lean, and requires fertilization. While organic fertilizer is used, non-organic nutrients are almost always necessary, and it is said that the soil in the cerrado must be “engineered” to grow coffee. Coffee production in this region is the most highly mechanized in the world, with little hand picking. The flat terrain lends itself to machine harvesting, as do the sharply defined wet and dry seasons, which result in most coffee trees ripening simultaneously. This synchronized ripening is further choreographed by targeted irrigation. Given the pronounced dry season, most farms in the cerrado are at least partially irrigated. Drip irrigation is very expensive, so pivot-arm irrigators (which are more wasteful) are frequently used.

Because the natural habitats of the cerrado have few trees, the whole concept of “shade coffee” is not applicable here — coffee is grown in the sun. Preserving biodiversity in the cerrado relies on setting aside areas of natural habitat.

Consumers will often read that Brazilian coffee farms have preserved natural areas on their property. For the most part, this doesn’t mean they have a commitment to the environment. The Brazilian Forest Code is a law that states that in certain areas, a proportion of the land must be permanently preserved for conservation of natural resources and wildlife. In the cerrado, the percentage is 35%.

A close friend of mine lives in Minas Gerais, Brazil, and is active in the bird conservation community, serving on the boards of several national bird organizations. Responding to my recent inquiry regarding the Forest Code, he wrote to me,

“[T]here is intense lobby to change the law to reduce these numbers and/or to allow other forms of compensation (such as: I destroy a virgin forest and buy some useless land *in another biome* and set aside to compensate for it). Also, farmers include everything in their reserve: useless land, land that is already set aside for permanent protection (such as water course margins and hilly slopes).

Unhappily, corruption is, let me make it clear, ***WIDESPREAD*** in Brazil, by far our biggest problem and the source of many others. Many people and companies do not obey the laws and [bribe] the inspectors.”

This lack of compliance is well documented. This is truly disturbing, for the amount of acreage set aside is critical. Unlike growing coffee in a rustic forest setting, which is similar enough to native habitat to support many insects, birds, and other animals, little if any of the fauna of the cerrado utilizes the densely planted fields of coffee. Coffee replaces the native vegetation of the cerrado, and does not in any way resemble the natural ecosystem, unlike shade grown forest coffee systems.

Currently covering around 160,000 hectares, coffee farms represent only a fraction of the agricultural landscape of the cerrado. Nonetheless, coffee growing is agent of habitat conversion in this unique ecosystem, offering fewer opportunities to preserve biodiversity than coffee growing in other regions.

Update (January 2026): This review paper in the journal Nature Conservation updates the dire situation of the destruction of the cerrado. It goes into excellent detail on the biodiversity of the area, which unique species are at risk, the extent and source of threats, impediments to conservation, etc.

Maned Wolf photo = World Wildlife Fund, UK.

Coffee reviews / Latin America / Starbucks

Starbucks Black Apron Costa Rica

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #29.

Starbucks Black Apron Exclusive: Organic Lomas Al Rio (Costa Rica).

This review is a tad out of the ordinary for two reasons. First, I don’t buy coffee from Costa Rica. For the most part, they have gone in for sun coffee and chemicals and the Costa Rican marketing model makes it very difficult to identify where and how a particular bean was grown. You can read all the details in my post on coffee growing in Costa Rica. Second, I don’t buy coffee from Starbucks. Not because I dislike the company, but I just find most of their coffee overroasted, not very fresh, and in the case of the Black Apron line, outrageously overpriced ($14/half pound). Nonetheless, the back stories of the Black Apron coffees have been so interesting (e.g., Gemadro, Terranova) that I always see what’s new and what I can find out about it.

The latest Black Apron Exclusive is Organic Lomas Al Rio. Lomas Al Rio is not an estate, farm, or co-op, but a coffee mill in the Central Valley. This area is known for its sun coffee. To its credit, Starbucks makes no claim that this is shade coffee, and clearly states Lomas Al Rio is a mill. This source is not new to Starbucks, which has been purchasing Lomas Al Rio coffee since 1998; it is an intregal part of its Cafe Estima blend.

The Lomas Al Rio mill receives coffee from well over a hundred small and medium farms. It doesn’t process exclusively organic coffee, in no small part because so little organic coffee is produced in Costa Rica (less than 1% of the crop). Many farms in Costa Rica that were once organic have given up on it and gone back to using chemicals (non-organic nitrogen fertilizers in particular). The reason often given is that quality can’t be sustained organically. This is inaccurate in general, but in the case of large areas of sun coffee, it may be true. Sun coffee monocultures strip the soil of nutrients, and pests are more prevalent without the predators (birds, lizards, other insects) found in more forested coffee farms. The long route to high quality organic coffee in Costa Rica would probably involve re-planting a lot of native shade trees. Obviously, it’s easier to just start using non-organic means instead.

Around 2002, Lomas Al Rio was Costa Rica’s first Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee. Alas, it is no more, having let certification lapse.

No doubt this coffee is Catuai and/or Caturra, as these sun-tolerant varieties are very dominant in Costa Rica. If the “use by” date on the packaging is 6 months out from roasting, we sampled this coffee at two months old, rather long in the tooth. It produced a weak bloom, so I’d guess the we’re pretty close on the age. As I mentioned, most Starbucks coffees are roasted too dark for my taste. This wasn’t too bad, a medium-brown with a sheen, but no spots of oil. But I was dismayed at the pieces and shards in the bag, and the tell-tale missing divots on many beans, a sign that the coffee was roasted too fast. This is a sign of carelessness, but may only affect a given batch. At $14 a box, I was not about to buy another to see how common this error might be. So my expectations were not high. I was very happily surprised.

This coffee had great balance, with a medium body, a pleasant, soft mouthfeel, and a nice finish. It was wonderfully sweet when hot, and it had a distinct flavor than none of us (amateurs) could identify. Marzipan popped into my head — some sort of carmelized sugary almond flavor. Another taster also felt strongly about an almond note. This intriguing mystery flavor meant we tried it repeatedly with different people. Just about everybody liked it, and nobody came any closer to really nailing the sweet taste. Once the coffee really got cool, it took on a sort of odd flavor. But, what do you know, it got a solid 3.25 motmots.

Coffee Review tasted Lomas Al Rio from two different roasters in 1998 and 2002.

Coffee and the environment

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 consumption is so ubiquitous, coffee drinkers have tremendous influence on habitat preservation and the conservation of biodiversity. The small actions of many people have enormous power — your actions can make a difference!

Here are the top 5 actions you can do as a coffee drinker to help the environment.

  1. Stop buying coffee from “the big four”: Nestlé, Kraft, Procter and Gamble, and Sara Lee/Doewe Egberts. Here is a list of their brands. These multinational companies, aside from having other dubious business practices outside of coffee, are motivated entirely by profit and market share. The only way they can offer cheap coffee at their huge volumes is to increase production and decrease production costs. Coffee is grown as a monoculture in the sun on large plantations with high chemical inputs and farmers are not paid a living wage. Read more about how sun coffee destroys biodiversity and the issues surrounding corporate coffee. I can’t emphasize enough: if you do one thing, this is it, quit buying commodity coffee.
  2. Buy organic coffee. Certified organic is great. Quite a lot of coffee is grown organically but not certified (“passive organic”) or nearly organically (even occasional use of spot-applied herbicide or non-organic fertilizer is a disqualifier). If you are willing to do a little research to learn which ones, these are great, too. You can read more in the organic coffee category; of special interest is this post summarizing organic certification.
  3. Use your own mug! Disposable coffee cups have to be the most wasteful product in the Western world. Here’s something you own for less than a half-hour, and throw away. And you get another the next day, or perhaps sooner. Good for the companies that are developing cups made from recycled or biodegradable materials. They still get thrown away, and in the anaerobic conditions of a landfill, even grass takes a very long time to break down. In the U.S. between 15 and 39 billion cups are tossed every year (Starbucks uses nearly 2 billion a year). How many do you throw away? Stop!! Bring some mugs to work, keep a couple of travel mugs in the car. How hard is that?
  4. Buy from a local roaster. Unless you live in the tropics, it will not be possible for you to drink locally-grown coffee. But you can cut down on the fuel used to ship roasted coffee by purchasing from a local roaster. You can check out my interactive roaster map for some great roasters around North America — feel free to make suggestions for additions. If you don’t have a local roaster, look for Allegro coffee at your nearest Whole Foods Market. There’s an added bonus for supporting your local roaster. You develop a relationship with them and can let them know what’s important to you. You increase their business, providing them with resources which enable them to develop direct relationships with farmers, which nearly always means improving sustainability efforts. Win-win-win.
  5. Quit using paper coffee filters. Don’t kill trees and send a filter a day to the landfill. There is a reusable gold filter for virtually every pot. This action also saves money in the long run, and makes your coffee taste better. Most paper filters tend to change the taste of the coffee, either by adding their own paper/chemical taste, and/or by absorbing some of the oils in the coffee that help give each bean its unique flavor.