Month: February 2009 Page 1 of 2

Coffee review: Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico

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On February 26, 2009

In Coffee reviews, Latin America, Retail and specialty roasters, Starbucks

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #41.

Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexicois produced by around 900 small farmers on 3200 ha of land in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas [1]. Many of the farms are near or adjacent to the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, which contains the northernmost cloud forests in the world and is considered as one of the greatest biodiversity sites of North America. El Triunfo totals 119,000 ha, of which 93,458 ha corresponds to a buffer zone and the rest to the core areas. Core areas are primary forest owned by the government. The buffer zone consists of privately owned lands, about 60% of which are forested. The remainder is agricultural, with shade coffee being the dominant crop; up to 70% is rustic shade.

Originally this coffee was to be a temporary offering, but proved so popular that it is on the permanent Starbucks menu.

Background

This coffee-sourcing is part of a partnership with Conservation International (CI) which began in 1998. Originally, this was to be a three-year program with CI providing technical assistance to producers encouraging them to continue eco-friendly growing practices, and Starbucks as a dependable buyer. This partnership has continued with some new wrinkles, including the development of Starbucks C.A.F.E. practices.

This project has not been without controversy. One main gripe has been that the contracts with Starbucks paid above-market prices, but the beans went through the large exporter and processor Agroindustrias de Mexico (AMSA), which took a cut of the price. This doesn’t seem like an unusual arrangement and perhaps the only practical one with between a large buyer and dozens of cooperatives. At some point Starbucks did try to deal directly with producers, but the cooperatives were unable to arrange shipment.

Some of the co-ops withdrew from participation. Various reasons have been given. According to CI’s report to USAID [1], when the world price of coffee rose above the price already agreed to in the contracts, producers reneged and sold to other buyers (a not too-uncommon occurrence). Some felt that, after a long struggle for autonomy, that they were once again beholden to middlemen [2]. CI apparently negotiated many of the initial contracts, and some producers later regretted signing when they found out Starbucks was the end buyer (was that not in the contracts?). There were also objections to quality demands being imposed on them.

Nonetheless, the arrangement with Starbucks did and has increased income for many of the farmers. One co-op mentioned as a participant in a New York Times article was identified by a Fair Trade advocate as being organizationally weak, not well suited to judging the quality of their own beans, and unable to seek out other buyers. If that’s the case, this co-op may not be qualified for Fair Trade certification, and therefore Starbucks might be the best option for them, at least at this time.

While there is a lack of publicly available objective information on the outcomes of the Chiapas coffee project, from what I have read it has had an overall positive net impact. Encouraging and promoting organic and shade-grown coffee is a major goal of El Triunfo conservation efforts. At least for some period of time, cooperatives that withdrew from the CI/Starbucks program had a hard time finding buyers, especially those that would pay high prices and invest in their communities. If Starbucks is purchasing an average of 1.7 million pounds of coffee from this area every year, this is likely a good thing, especially if these producers do not have other options for selling their beans.

Finally, we need to bear in mind that this is a certified organic coffee, but it does not have shade certification by Smithsonian or Rainforest Alliance. As mentioned above, however, the coffee grown in this area, especially in the El Triunfo buffer zone, is traditionally grown in the shade, often diverse shade.

Let’s move on to the coffee
Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico is billed as a medium roast. For a company known to over-do the roasting, I was surprised to see that “medium” was actually “medium.” I think good Mexican coffees are delicate and sweet and should be roasted light, but I suppose medium was a good compromise to cater to the tastes of Starbucks customers. I was also surprised to see that in a French press, this coffee was fresh enough to have a decent bloom.

This coffee was what we expected from a Mexican coffee: pleasant, approachable, smooth, and well-balanced. It was fairly sweet with hints of chocolate; a couple people thought that rather than milk chocolate it was a more bittersweet dark chocolate, perhaps due to the roast. One person tasted cinnamon. Overall, comments were quite positive. A few people with known anti-Starbucks sentiments were grudgingly impressed. This is a decent coffee that most people should find more than acceptable. When the votes were tallied, it came away with a solid 3 motmots.

Because of its size, Starbucks falls victim to its own success. Providing a consistent product at such large volumes inevitably means lower quality, buying through exporters (and thus lower prices for producers) and an inability to truly police the growing methods of thousands of farmers. Still, I can think of few other offerings by any of the big roasters that are as positive for the environment as the Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico. It sure beats Kraft’s 30% Rainforest Alliance certified (and 70% mystery-sourced) Yuban, and tastes better to boot.

[1] Conservation International and Starbucks Coffee Company. 2007. The Conservation Coffee Alliance.  USAID Contract # 596-A-00-04-00039-00, Annual and Final Report 2004-2007. [PDF]

[2] Gonzalez, A. A. and R. Nigh. 2004. Smallholder participation and certification of organic farm products in Mexico. Journal of Rural Studies 21:449-460.

Shade coffee article from Cornell Lab of Ornithology

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On February 24, 2009

In Coffee news and miscellany

BirdScope is the newsletter for members of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one of the world's best known bird research, education, and citizen science organizations. This latest issue has a short article on shade coffee. Yours truly is quoted in it. Check it out: Saving the tropics one sip at a time.

Birds & Beans now available

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On February 21, 2009

In Retail and specialty roasters, Smithsonian Bird-Friendly

The Birds & Beans: The Good Coffee web site is now up and running. Since I posted about this initiative, which offers only Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee, there have been a few tweaks and changes.

  • The price is a tad higher than first announced: two pounds for $19.25 plus shipping.
  • Looks like you can subscribe from anywhere in the U.S., not just New England (Canadian customers should order from Birds & Beans Canada, which has a wider choice of coffees and no subscription restrictions).
  • Right now, they do not seem to be putting the country of origin on any of the bags, and only mentioning Colombia as the origin of the medium-roast coffee on the web site. This might mean they will source from various Bird-Friendly certified farms and focus on a flavor profile. Personally, I think promoting specific origins is a critical part of educating the public. I also think that birders, to whom this line is targeted, would be especially enthusiastic and receptive to the specific stories behind some of the Bird-Friendly certified farms. So much research has been done at some of them, they could put a bird list and photos on the web site — and birders, of all consumers, would totally get this. Big missed marketing opportunity, in my opinion.

There is an attractive page with photos of eight species of migratory birds. I assume that there will be some sort of text accompanying them at some point, as they aren’t even identified. They are all migratory species that breed in North America and winter in the tropics, but not all species that depend on, or even winter in, coffee farms. There are also nice bios of the bird conservationists that have been supporting this effort.

We have been trying out all three varieties of Birds & Beans coffees this week. I had intended on posting a longer review later, but since I will be in Nicaragua when the trial period expires, it looks like now is the time to fire off our first impressions. I won’t rate them with motmots, since they have not been tasted by as many people yet as usual.

These were all roasted by Wicked Joe. No roast date on the package.

The “Scarlet Tanager” dark roast is really dark. Starbucks fans, line up here. I was told this is currently from Peru, and aside from a few small microlots sometimes offered by other roasters, I have yet to meet a Peruvian coffee I really like. So this was not my cup, but I did find it very smooth for such a dark roast. Folks who liked a darker roast in our office that have tried it so far were happy with it.

The medium roast “Chestnut-sided Warbler” was perhaps a tad on the dark side of medium, with all beans showing an oil sheen and many oil spots. There was evidence on some beans that it had been roasted too rapidly (this creates little divots in the beans where rapid expansion pops a hunk off). I presume the actual origin of this is Mesa de los Santos, which has long been the only Bird-Friendly certified farm in Colombia. We’ve reviewed and commented on this origin previously, so I won’t go into the details here. This coffee garnered the most diverse comments. A few wished it had been just a tad lighter so some of the more sweeter tones would emerge. Others got the sweetness right away, and pegged a cherry-like fruit flavor. It was smooth and quite bright for a medium/dark roast.

The light roast “Wood Thrush” was the winner of the group. As of this writing, it is sourced from Mexico, and had the chocolate sweetness one expects from this origin. It was especially good in a French press, where it had character and some complexity. Brewed, it was just a nice, pleasant classic Latin American cup. Overall, it just had more going on in the cup than the other two.

The primary audience for these coffees is birders. Most birders I know drink a lot of dark, pedestrian coffee. I think they will find the Birds & Beans coffee a real step up, but not too different from the flavor and roast profiles they are accustomed to, or so exotic that they don’t “get it.” The “Wood Thrush” will also please those that have somewhat more refined palates. All the coffees should completely satisfy people who really care about habitat and biodiversity preservation and want it fully represented in their cup.

If you try these coffees, please leave some impressions in the comments — both on the taste and your thoughts on the web site and “theme.” I’m especially interested in what birders think!

Green Mountain to fund climate change projects

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On February 17, 2009

In Climate change, Coffee and the environment, Keurig Green Mountain, Retail and specialty roasters

Green Mountain Coffee Roasters will award four grants of $200,000 each to organizations with ideas to combat climate change in four core areas: transportation-related emissions (including GMCR’s product shipping), threats to coffee-growing communities (enormous, given that climate change is already pushing coffee production to higher altitudes), building political will, and empowering individual action. Grant recipients will also be required to meet with GMCR twice a year to help the company work on reducing and mitigating its own carbon footprint.

The last two grant categories seem a little amorphous, but I’m quite enthusiastic about the potential for development of programs that can help farmers adjust to climate change (for those that can; the solution for many farmers may actually be to transition to other crops, unfortunately).

This grant project is part of a larger effort by GMCR to focus on climate change through changing business practices and raising awareness (you can read their statement on climate change here).

Spending $800,000 in the current economic crisis by a company that sells what is essentially a “luxury” item is, I think, a pretty strong statement of commitment to environmental responsibility. Kudos to GMCR.

 

Research: Coffee certification and bird conservation in Ethiopia

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On February 12, 2009

In Research on coffee growing

Ethiopian coffee cultivation — Implications for bird conservation and environmental certification. 2008. A. D. Gove, K. Hylander, S. Nemomisa, and A. Shimelis. Conservation Letters 1:208-216.

Common Fiscal (Lanius collaris), a shrike relative that favors shrubland found almost exclusively in the farm plots.

This is probably the first peer-reviewed paper specifically about coffee growing/shade coffee and birds in Ethiopia. It reveals that the relationship between coffee management and bird diversity is different in Ethiopia than it is in Latin America, where shade coffee criteria were developed, and these differences need to be taken into account in certification criteria.

The study took place in southwestern Ethiopia near Bonga, where coffee is harvested from within existing forests, and also grown in mixed systems with other crops under isolated shade trees. The study area is a mosiac of forest and agriculture, and authors compared birds present in 19 forest sites with 19 farm sites — all representing a range of tree and coffee densities.

Many of the 106 bird species recorded were found in both the forest and farm plots, but forest bird assemblages were distinct from those found on farms.

The Red-chested Cuckoo (Cuculus solitarius) is a woodland species that was found in both farm and forest plots, but more often in forest.

Tree density on farms had a positive influence on the number of forest and woodland bird species. In this way, coffee cultivation, with its associated shade trees, improves habitat for birds by increasing
habitat complexity in these largely open degraded lands. The
coffee plots with their isolated tree patches would not qualify as “shade coffee” under most current criteria. But since coffee is native to Ethiopia, even these little plots could be considered rehabilitation of cleared land. Further, although isolated, the shade trees in coffee farm plots acted as “stepping stones” through inhospitable habitat, and, if plots were abandoned, as valuable sources of seeds that could regenerate forests. The authors concluded coffee cultivation on these small farms was a plus for bird habitat.

On the other hand, most of the forest plots would qualify as shade coffee under current criteria, which emphasize canopy structure. However, it is not uncommon for forest plots to be manipulated for increased coffee density; these plots had complex canopy but simplified understories. This change in forest structure decreased the number of bird species. Encouraging this type of “shade” coffee farming would actually have an overall negative impact on birds and bird habitat. These situations need to be taken into account in future certification schemes in Ethiopia, and perhaps elsewhere in Africa.

A forest specialist, the African Hill Babbler (Pseudoalcippe abyssinica) was found nearly exclusively in forest plots.

Finally, the authors emphasized that “Ensuring that coffee farmers receive a reasonable price for the commodity is perhaps most important.” Under low prices, farmers anticipate clearing forest for cereal, corn, or khat crops, or large government-sponsored sun coffee farms, threatening habitats of all types.

Top: Common Fiscal photo by Lip Kee. Middle:  Red-chested Cuckoo photo by Johann du Preez. Bottom: African Hill Babbler photo by Veli Pohjonen, East Usambara Conservation Area Management Programme, Bugwood.org.

A. D. Gove, K. Hylander, S. Nemomisa, A. Shimelis (2008). Ethiopian coffee cultivation — Implications for bird conservation and environmental certification. Conservation Letters, 1, 208-216.

Fair Trade environmental standards

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On February 8, 2009

In Background information, Fair and Direct Trade

It’s hard to blame consumers for being confused by the number of eco-labels on products these days. “Fair Trade” certified coffee is probably the most familiar to many consumers. Fair Trade (generically and as trademarked by various organizations) is primarily concerned with alleviating poverty through greater equity in international trade. Fair Trade is governed in most of the world by the Fairtrade International (FLO).  In the U.S., Fairtrade America is their member organization. The former member, Fair Trade USA, which resigned from the international system in early 2012 and is now a separate entity.

Many people assume, however, that Fairtrade/Fair Trade certification standards also include robust environmental standards. This assumption is promoted by some organizations themselves.

For example, At one time, the Fair Trade USA environmental benefits web page has stated that “over 80% of the Fair Trade certified coffee in the U.S. is also shade-grown.” Currently, the site says “most” is shade-grown. According to the most recent (2006) statistics I could find, only about 40% of the Fair Trade coffee imported into the U.S.  is also certified by Rainforest Alliance and/or Smithsonian Bird-Friendly [1].  More recently, Fairtrade International’s benefits report (found on their Facts and Figures page), notes 51% of Fairtrade certified producers (of ANY product, not just coffee) also hold organic certification, and 10% have Rainforest Alliance certification. Since neither of those certifications guarantees shade themselves, I am not sure if either organization can claim that the majority of their certified coffee is also shade-grown.

In fact, Fair Trade certification has no criteria related to growing coffee under shade, it does not require organic certification, it contains no guidelines for management of native or non-native species, it does not require any inventory of wildlife or prohibit hunting or trafficking in animals. These are all included in the criteria for shade certification by Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (Bird-Friendly) and/or Rainforest Alliance.

Let’s take a look at the Fairtrade/Fair Trade environmental standards.

Fairtrade International is the association of producer networks and national labeling initiatives, including Fairtrade America, that develops and reviews the Fairtrade standards. There are two sets of standards: overarching generic standards, and standards specific to each type of product. Let’s look at the standards which specifically address preserving and protecting the environment.

Here is a summary of the generic producer standards for small producers (which apply to coffee farmers) that address preserving and protecting the environment:

  • No plant material can be collected from protected areas or propagated illegally.
  • Harvesting of wild products from natural areas must be done sustainably and human impact minimized.
  • Co-ops should have environmental and land use plans and maintain records pertaining to land, water, and chemical use.
  • Co-ops must recognize conservation and buffer areas and not cultivate within them or apply agrochemicals.
  • Virgin forest can’t be cultivated, unless an exception is granted.
  • In areas of low biodiversity or similar degraded areas, co-op members should plant trees or “encourage” regeneration of native flora.
  • Co-ops should promote farm diversity, including reforestation or shade implementation, “as is practical” and “progress should be made over time.”
  • No use of chemicals on a prohibited list.
  • Agrochemicals must be labeled, stored, and used as directed.
  • Use of permitted herbicides must be justified.
  • Producers are expected to seek less toxic alternatives to and try to reduce volumes of agrochemicals to the extent possible.
  • Waste should be reduced, reused, recycled and composted in an appropriate manner.
  • Soil erosion should be managed, soil fertility should be maintained.
  • Water should be managed efficiently and to avoid contamination and depletion of resources.
  • Genetically modified organisms are prohibited.

These are indeed pretty generic. There are few specific criteria and virtually no quantifiable or measurable rules. I expected the product standard for coffee to have more precise restrictions or environmental standards relating to birds and wildlife. Here’s what the 2009 document said:

“There are no additional environmental standards specific to coffee producers.”

Fairtrade International standards can be downloaded from this page.

Fair Trade USA environmental standards are substantially similar and there are no separate documents or guidelines for coffee. Their standards can be downloaded from this page.

There are plenty of worthwhile things about these certifications. The environmental guidelines, however general, are better than none at all and in many cases undoubtedly result in better environmental conditions. I strongly believe that reducing poverty also helps prevent environmental exploitation, and Fair Trade has improved the lives of thousands of farmers. Because Fair Trade coffee is grown by small producers, it is often grown in a sustainable manner.

But just to clarify: Fairtrade/Fair Trade certification alone does not automatically mean or guarantee that rigorous environmental standards were followed, or that the coffee was grown under shade. For that you’ll have to look for an additional seal or seals, or have detailed information about the specific origin to assess growing conditions.

[1] Giovannucci, D., Liu, P. and A. Byers. 2008. Adding value: certified coffee trade in North America. In Pascal Liu (ed.). Value-adding Standards in the North American Food Market – Trade Opportunities in Certified Products for Developing Countries. FAO, Rome. Available online (PDF).

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