Month: September 2008

Research: migratory birds provide pest control, increase profit, in Jamaican coffee farms

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On September 29, 2008

In Research on coffee growing

Ecological and economic services provided by birds on Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee farms. 2008. Kellermann, J. L., M. D. Johnson, A. M. Stercho, and S. C. Hackett. Conservation Biology 22:1177-1185.

There have been several good papers published lately on coffee farming that I will be summarizing, but this was the most interesting to me, as I have seen the data presented at recent ornithological conferences.

This study looked at the benefits birds provide by preying on coffee berry borers at four coffee farms in Jamaica’s Blue Mountain region: Clifton Mount, Wallenford, McGraham, and Rowan’s Royale. Rowan’s Royale is the only certified organic coffee farm in Jamaica. All others used the pesticide endosulfan four months before this study began. To see if birds were eating coffee berry borers, the authors excluded birds from some coffee plants to look at the rate birds were preying upon coffee berry borers.

Coffee trees in which birds had no access had higher rates of borer infestation and greater damage. Unprotected trees had rates of infestation that were up to 14% lower, and the declines were determined to be due to birds preying on the borers.

Seventeen bird species preyed on coffee borer beetles; eleven were North American migrants wintering in Jamaica. The decline of the borer infestations on coffee trees accessible to birds coincided with the arrival of migrant birds to the island. Three migrant species did most of the work: Black-throated Blue Warbler, American Redstart, and Prairie Warbler (right).

The authors calculated that the value of pest control provided by birds (via increased yield) to farmers averaged US$75 per ha of coffee, not a small sum considering there are 10,000 ha of coffee in Jamaica and the per capita gross income in the country is US$3400. This figure did not include any additional economic benefits such as reduction of other pests, the potential for savings in pesticide reduction, or additional environmental benefits of not using highly toxic endosulfan.

One important component to this study was the finding that these bird species increased with close proximity to native forest patches, and declined steeply on coffee plots that were further than 40 to 50 meters from a habitat patch. In order for farmers to receive these ecological services and economic benefits from the birds, they need to provide habitat for them! Preserving native forest is a win-win situation for the farmers and the birds.

Black-throated Blue Warbler photo by yours truly; American Redstart by my talented friend Steve Hamilton; Prairie Warbler by Scott A. Young.

J. L. Kellerman, M. D. Johnson, A. M. Stercho, S. C. Hackett. (2008). Ecological and economic services provided by birds on Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee farms. Conservation Biology, 22 (5), 1177-1185 DOI: 10.1111/j.1523-1739.2008.00968.x

Shade coffee at Dave’s Garden

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On September 28, 2008

In Housekeeping

Dave’s Garden is an enormous web site that covers every issue of interest to gardeners. The site just had a feature article on shade coffee by Marna Towne. Marna hits all the high points to introduce DG users to this important issue. And this is no small audience: DG has over 400,000 registered users and can get nearly 2 million hits a month! Many thanks to Marna for doing this piece, and asking me to provide some information and photos.

So welcome Dave’s Garden readers! Please visit the User Guide for a list of the important background posts. If you only read one post here, make it The Top 5 Indicators of Sustainable Coffee.

Marna’s article covered some of the information in What is shade coffee? and What is sun coffee and why is it a problem? You may also want to check out the post on the coffee crisis (why cheap coffee is being grown on sun plantations) and an example of illegal coffee growing in a national park (how it ends up in common grocery store brands).

I hope Dave’s Garden readers find this site useful — and I welcome feedback — and that Coffee & Conservation readers head over to DG to check out all the incredible resources there!

Folger’s finds another way to make poor beans taste "better"

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On September 21, 2008

In Corporate coffee, Smucker's

Folger’s (owned by Procter & Gamble*) is introducing a new roasting method that they say is “the biggest innovation since the launch of decaf” according to an article in the New York Times. The article says

P.& G. has overhauled its main roasting plant in east New Orleans — which employs more than 400 people — to include a step it calls ”predry” or ”preroast.” Each bean is fully dried before roasting, ensuring a more evenly cooked bean, which makes it less bitter…Jim Trout, innovation leader for research and development, at P.& G., said: ”It’s like thawing a turkey before you cook it. If you don’t, the outside will be burnt and the inside will still be raw. This way it cooks evenly all the way through.”

P&G makes it sound as if they’ve come up with some necessary innovation that will improve the taste of coffee. The truth is, it’s only necessary for corporations like P&G, Kraft, Nestle, or Sara Lee that deal is millions of tons of coffee to utilize multiple post-harvest steps to make their product drinkable.

Green coffee beans do contain water. The drying process, which takes place shortly after harvest at the farm or mill, brings this down to 11 to 12  percent (further drying makes the beans brittle and the flavor bland). Skilled coffee roasters take the unique characteristics of a particular crop into account (including water content) in order to transform the raw, tasteless bean into a the flavorful roasted product that will highlight the best features of the crop in the cup. They also roast in small batches, from 7 to 25 or perhaps 50 pounds, in order to best control the roasting process and the delicate transformations taking place.

I repeated the word “crop” to remind us all that coffee is an agricultural product, not a bolt or a fan blade. Coffee beans vary from year to year, region to region, farm to farm, and even tree to tree depending on microclimate variables.

That’s the first problem big companies like P&G face. They get tons of beans from multiple sources. Some are wetter than others, and some are drier. They roast them in 300-pound batches. If they are to get any consistency, they have to start off with a uniform product — something closer to a bolt than to an agricultural product. Pre-drying/pre-roasting would indeed even out the beans so that they can “cook evenly all the way through.”

Actually, pre-drying is not a new procedure for P&G. In 1989, P&G used it to make beans more porous in order to impregnate them with compounds that would enhance the flavor while simultaneously treating them with enzymes to extract bitter compounds (found in cheap robusta beans). The following year, P&G applied for a patent using pre-roasting for creating dark roasts. They come right out and state in the application that

Low grade coffee beans with many defects will burn and scorch more readily than wholesome beans, causing non-uniform roasted bean colors and tastes … It is an object of the present invention to dark roast poor quality beans with less tipping and burning when compared to present dark roast processing.

Pre-drying and fast roasting also results in roasted beans that are less dense. In 1991, P&G worked out the method, incorporating pre-drying, that produced reduced density (lighter by weight) high yield (same number of cups from fewer beans) coffee. P&G’s “new” roasting method saves P&G lots of money in shipping costs.

According to the data provided by P&G to the Enquirer, what was once a 13 oz. can will now weigh 11.3 oz. but still  produce 90 cups of coffee. Tens of thousands of lighter cans of coffee will add up to significant cost savings in shipping with today’s high fuel prices. If the consumer pays the same price for each can of coffee, it will generate even more profit.

Technically, it’s true that this method improves the taste of Folger’s coffee — because they use low-quality beans to begin with, as is stated in each of their patent applications. In their application “Process for making reduced density coffee,” P&G notes that robustas are the preferred bean (it also states that even moldy beans “show a slight improvement”!).

Do not support these technological “advances” that allow the big multinationals to continue to purchase, and encourage the farming of, low-quality cheap coffee beans. It pushes farmers into poverty and destroys the environment.

*Smuckers purchased the Folger’s brand earlier this year, and the deal is expected to be completed within a few months.

Coffee Review covers Rainforest Alliance coffees

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On September 12, 2008

In Certifications, Coffee reviews, Rainforest Alliance

Kenneth Davids’ excellent Coffee Review takes on Rainforest Alliance coffees for its September reviews. Please go read his concise and insightful introduction to the reviews. He provides a good overview of the RA program and how it differs from Fair Trade, how they complement each other, and RA’s efforts to adapt their standards to different cultures and types of coffee organizations.

Davids makes a couple of interesting observations about the RA coffees submitted by roasters for the reviews. Two dozen roasters submitted 34 single-origin RA-certified coffees, but they only represented eleven producers. Familiar RA producers Daterra Estate in Brazil, Panama’s Hacienda La Esmeralda, Selva Negra estate in Nicaragua, and the Mesa de los Santos farm in Colombia (which is also certified Smithsonian Bird-Friendly) were all in the mix.

In addition to the twelve submitted coffees that were reviewed, Davids threw in a review of Kraft’s Yuban coffee, which contains 30% RA-certified beans. The rest, based on his trained palate, is cheap robusta:

Based on a reading of cup profile, the blend we cupped (Yuban Original) probably contains enough Brazil from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to qualify for the certification seal, with a good part of the remainder of the blend inexpensive robustas, perhaps steamed to remove flavor taints. The result is a Rainforest Alliance Certified version of the bland, woody, faintly sweet supermarket profile that has come to dominate canned coffee shelves over the last two decades.

I understand the theory behind RA working with Kraft or other multinationals to get them to buy more certified beans. However, I think there is a serious problem with consumers thinking that this is a truly sustainable coffee if 70% of the beans are not certified, and likely cheap, sun-grown beans grown with chemicals. Nor do I think RA is doing itself any favors by putting its seal on crappy-tasting supermarket coffees, especially when it is highly likely to be the first or only RA-certified coffee consumers will encounter.

Go enjoy the reviews and give some of the coffees a try — just skip the Yuban.

Know your coffee birds: Jacu

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On September 6, 2008

In Birds and other biodiversity, Know Your Coffee Birds series

When I conceived the “Know Your Coffee Birds” series, I made up a list of birds often found in shade coffee farms. There was one that was not included that I feel compelled to write about already because it’s being used in a unique way to market coffee: the Jacu bird.

The Dusky-legged Guan, a.k.a. “Jacu”, has found a new career as a coffee picker and processor.

“Jacu” is the Brazilian name given to a group of birds, actually — the guans. Guans are the largest group in the bird family Cracidae — primitive, vaguely chicken-like forest birds found in much of Latin America. There are 15 species of guans in the genus Penelope. All guans are strictly forest birds, preferring primary forest. Due to deforestation and hunting pressure, cracids in general are among the most endangered groups of birds in the Neotropics.

Guans are primarily vegetarians, eating mostly fruit and berries, some flowers and buds, and a few insects. Guans are very important in tropical ecosystems because of their role in dispersing seeds in the forests in which they live. It is this frugivorous diet that leads us to the Jacu’s coffee connection.

Guans eat ripe coffee cherries. While they are unlikely to venture onto sun coffee plantations, they will live in or near coffee farms where coffee is grown in forest-like conditions and/or adjacent to intact forest. Like nearly any animal that eats fruit, guans prefer fully ripe fruit, and that includes coffee cherries. One might imagine this habit would draw the ire of coffee farmers. But at least one enterprising producer is using the philosophy, “If life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” Or in this case, “If life gives you bird crap with coffee beans it it, make coffee.”

In the spirit of kopi luwak, produced from coffee beans collected from the feces of civet cats in southeast Asia, comes Jacu coffee, produced from beans collected from the droppings of guans.

This coffee is currently being offered by Camocim Estate (two farms: Camocin and Alatalia) in Pedra Azul, Brazil. Pedra Azul is in the southern part of the Atlantic state of Espirito Santo. Two species of guan may be found there: Rusty-margined Guan (Penelope superciliaris) and Dusky-legged Guan (P. obscura).

Fazenda Camocim encompasses 500 hectares in total, with 50 planted in coffee, and the rest re-planted in a forest-rejuvenation project. The farms are certified organic and biodynamic, and utilize fruit and nut trees in the coffee plantings, and native habitat patches as well. All of which no doubt provides habitat and other food for the guans.

Supposedly, some of the ”unique” characteristics of kopi luwak come from the civet’s digestive process, which according to tests leach out proteins which cause bitterness. But a bird’s digestive system is different than that of a mammal.

The digestive enzymes in mammals and birds are similar. But while some cracids do have gizzards in which ingested grit helps crack and grind seeds, it is not well developed in guans. So the beans are not getting a lot of deep scratches that would allow for added absorption of chemicals that might alter the properties of the bean. Most importantly, food passes very quickly through birds. Birds typically pass the seeds of fruit within an hour, or at most a few hours. It’s very inefficient for a bird to have their small digestive tracts loaded up with a lot of seeds — especially large ones like coffee beans. I cannot imagine there is any physical reason why they should taste much different than the rest of the crop that is harvested by humans and processed in a more traditional manner.

However it tastes, I love the idea of this coffee. It means the beans are coming from a forested area, from producers that care about working with and preserving — rather than fighting and eliminating — native wildlife. And that’s especially important in this case, because Espirito Santo is smack in the Atlantic Forest biome, one of the most exceptionally biodiverse and endangered habitat types in the world. Large bird species have been severely reduced or extirpated in many of the remaining forest fragments of the Atlantic Forest. This has dire consequences, as up to half of the native tree species require birds, including guans, which have large enough mouths to swallow and disperse their fruits. Rusty-margined Guans are tolerant of disturbed habitats and have been considered important for their role in seed dispersal in these forests and have been suggested for use in conservation efforts.

One day, I wouldn’t mind reviewing some jacu coffee. I’ve seen it offered green at Sweet Maria’s in the U.S. and roasted from Hasbean in the U.K. I’d especially like to try it side-by-side with the more typically-processed organic from Camocim. When I find a U.S. source where I can get both, roasted, I’ll be on it like a duck on a june bug. Or a jacu on a coffee cherry.

Update: Here’s an interesting article on Jacu coffee in Modern Farmer in 2013.

References:

Cardoso da Silva, J. M. and M. Tabarelli. 2000. Tree species impoverishment and the future flora of the Atlantic forest of northeast Brazil. Nature 404: 72-74.

Munoz, M.C. and G. H. Kattan. 2007. Diets of cracids: how much do we know? Ornitologia Neotropica 18:21-36.

Pizo, M. A. 2004. Frugivory and habitat use by fruit eating birds in a fragmented landscape of southeast Brazil. Ornitologia Neotropica 15:117-126.

Photo of Dusky-legged Guan by JosÁ© ClÁ¡udio GuimarÁ£es.

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