JulieCraves

Coffee news and miscellany

NYT article on travel in Colombia's coffee areas

Today’s New York Times travel section had an article on touring Colombia’s Coffee Trail, the area to the west of Bogota known as Eje Cafetero. It talks about how one can stay at various fincas and haciendas, with part of the attraction being seeing how coffee is grown and processed.  Nowhere did it mention anything regarding biodiversity and coffee, or the level of technification of plantations in the area.  A photo of one of the visited plantations, Finca el Balso, showed what appeared to be sun-grown coffee. Colombia has one of the highest percentages of sun coffee, nearly 70%.

The Eje Cafetero region is considered a biodiversity hotspot, and one of the focus areas of the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Colombia program. Conservation International has also done work in coffee-growing regions in Colombia, most notably in partnership with Starbucks. 

The article also notes that it’s difficult to get a good cup of coffee in Colombia!

Corporate coffee

The Coffee Crisis

The “coffee crisis” inevitably comes up in any talk of the coffee industry, especially Fair Trade issues. Here’s a summary of what it’s all about.

Prior to 1989, coffee prices were controlled by a cartel, much like OPEC for oil. The International Coffee Agreement (ICA) imposed quotas and controlled prices between major coffee producing and consuming countries. This resulted in fairly stable prices for coffee (known as the “C” price on the commodity market) of between US$1 and $1.50 a pound.

The ICA was renegotiated every five years by member countries. In 1989, the ICA collapsed when it was not renewed. In part this was due to a lack of support by the U.S., which had a great deal of power as the largest importing member nation. The U.S. had less political motivation to help major producing nations. Further, the Reagan administration was strongly free market and opposed the ICA on those grounds. These factors played a key role in the demise of the ICA.

Under the free market, prices plummeted, down to $0.49 per pound in 1992. Remember that this is the commodity price, and the farmers themselves receive only a fraction of the “C” price; in this case far below production costs.

Small farmers are extremely vulnerable to this market volatility. Experiencing up to a 70% drop in their incomes, many were devastated. Many abandoned their land, migrated north, or cleared their land for more profitable crops, including drugs. Child malnutrition climbed.

Although the initial price crash was an immediate response to the disintegration of the ICA, another cause contributed to subsequent crashes and sustained low coffee prices: oversupply. World development banks, promoting export-led development as a way to decrease poverty, funded increased production in many nations, most notably Vietnam. This country increased production over 1100% in the decade beginning in 1991. In addition to the development organizations, multinational corporations played a large role encouraging an increased coffee supply. They are typically known as the “big four” — Nestlé, Proctor & Gamble, Kraft, and Sara Lee (here are the brands these companies owned at the time of this post).

Much of this coffee glut was cheaper robusta beans (Coffea canephora). Because they are bitter and considered low-quality, robusta has historically only been used as filler in blends or in cheap coffee. Now methods have been developed by the large coffee corporations to process green robusta beans to make them more palatable. These companies now use a much higher percentage of robusta in their coffees rather than buying arabica from smaller growers in Latin America, where production costs are much higher than in Vietnam. In this way, the oversupply of robusta also depressed arabica prices.

The big four are making tremendous profits while lowering the quality of the world’s coffee. Over ten years, the profit retained by coffee-producing nations went from about 30 percent of the purchase price to 8 percent.

The investments made by these corporations in the growing of cheap coffee and the development of a process in which to make it drinkable are important factors in precipitating the coffee crisis.  An excellent, highly recommended article from Fortune magazine notes,

“Of course, without a market for cheap, low-grade robusta, there would never have been a coffee boom in Vietnam. And that’s exactly what the Big Four, along with other large European roasters, provided. They took advantage of new steam-cleaning technology to eliminate the coffee’s harsh flavor. They introduced flavored coffee — hazelnut, Irish cream–to disguise robusta’s inferior taste.”

A very good overview of the coffee crisis is over at CoffeeGeek, with recommendations for consumers.  It also touches on another aspect of the crisis, which is that higher quality coffee beans are becoming rarer, because the small farmers that grow it cannot compete and are going out of business.  As the Fortune article says,

“But the short-term economic advantages of robusta are overshadowed by long-term costs — for growers, drinkers, even the Big Four themselves. In the past ten years, as the global coffee market swelled from $30 billion to $70 billion, the revenues of growers have dwindled. Coffee drinkers, meanwhile, have had to contend with declining quality: The java at your local grocery store or deli now contains more robusta, and gourmet purveyors, which rely exclusively on the high-quality arabica growers in Latin America and Africa most damaged by the crisis, are having a tougher time sourcing beans. When quality drops, people tend to drink less coffee.”

The International Coffee Organization has proposed destroying the worst (lowest quality) 5% of the crop, helping to alleviate the surplus.  The big four are opposed to this plan.

More information:

Photo of Colombian coffee farmers by, ironically, Nestlé, under a Creative Commons license.

Certifications / Coffee and the environment

Is promoting shade-grown coffee really a good conservation strategy?

In 2003, a number of important researchers debated the conservation value of promoting shade-grown coffee in the pages of the journal Conservation Biology.

First Rappole et al. [1] wrote that if the result of promoting shade coffee resulted in the conversion of sun coffee to shade coffee, they would have no qualms about the whole shade coffee campaign.  However, they felt that the more likely outcome of the added incentives and profit of an increased demand for shade coffee would be

  • that farmers considering converting from shade to sun coffee would decide not to do so (a good thing),
  • and/or more primary forest would be converted to coffee (a bad thing), albeit shade coffee (still not as good as natural forest).

This conversion of primary forest to coffee would most likely occur, the authors wrote, on slopes that are too steep to grow sun coffee, representing new exploitation of the land. They were especially concerned with higher elevation pine-oak forests, important endangered tropical habitats.  Coffee is one of the only crops that can be grown in these forests, and providing financial incentives through shade coffee promotion might convince farmers to begin cultivation in these areas.  Removal of the oak layer, which presumably would occur even in shade coffee management, would have profound impacts on the endangered Golden-cheeked Warbler, a migrant that depends on the oaks in the winter.

In general, the authors felt that endorsing shade coffee plantations as refuges of biodiversity was a “lowering of the bar” in terms of conservation goals.  They argued that diversity only measures numbers of species, which does not tell us anything about how ecologically equivalent two communities may be.  A shade coffee plantation may have 50 open-country species whereas the primary forest may also have 50 species, but they would be forest specialists which would be lost when the area was converted to coffee.  Finally, the authors were concerned that the consumer might not realize there are many variations in the way shade coffee is grown, and not all are good for biodiversity.

Philpott and Dietsch [2] replied, making the point loss of species richness in highly shaded coffee farms is minimal compared to the huge losses from other forms of agriculture. They argue that financial incentives that prevent farmers from converting their farms to sun coffee, cattle pasture, or illegal crops is beneficial.

Primarily, the authors argue for rigorous shade-certification programs to prevent premiums from going to farms that do not truly preserve biodiversity, and strong linkages between organic, shade-grown, and Fair Trade certification.  Further, to discourage conversion of primary forest to coffee, certification could be withheld for new farms, for a specified period, so that farmers are not rewarded for clearing forest.

The original authors [3] came back to say that there were a lot of “ifs” in Philpott and Deitsch’s vision of how shade coffee can advance conservation goals.  They felt certification programs had a long way to go, were uncoordinated, and that the promotion of shade coffee was outstripping certification efforts.  They end by saying that they feel the conservation value of coffee is hypothetical, dependent upon assumptions, especially considering certification, that have yet to be realized.

All the points in the papers are valid.  The lesson to consumers is that we have to be diligent in our choices by purchasing certified Fair Trade, organic, truly shade grown coffee.  Certainly, if we are going to purchase and drink coffee, we won’t be doing the environment any good by buying cheap coffee from a corporate giant that pays little to farmers and buys most of its coffee from sun plantations.

The primary goal of this blog is to continue to keep up with current research on biodiversity in coffee plantations, and current issues and debates on the conservation value of coffee to help consumers make informed choices.

[1] Rappole, J. H., D. I. King, and J. H. Vega Rivera.  2003.  Coffee and conservation.  Conservation Biology 17:334-336.

[2] Philpott, S. M. and T. Dietsch.  2003.  Coffee and conservation: a global context and the value of farmer involvement.  Conservation Biology 17:1844-1846.

[3] Rappole, J. H., D. I. King, and J. H. Vega Rivera.  2003.  Coffee and conservation III: reply to Philpott and Dietsch. Conservation Biology 17: 1847-1849.

Background information / Coffee and the environment

What is shade-grown coffee?

Coffee (Coffea sp.) is a small understory tree or shrub, and has traditionally been grown amongst forest trees, in the shade. Various studies indicate that arabica coffee has the highest yields under 35 to 65% shade. In addition, growing coffee under shade also discourages weed growth, may reduce pathogen infection, protect the crop from frost, and helps to increase numbers of pollinators which results in better fruit set. Coffee grown in the shade takes long to ripen and is often thought to taste better because the long ripening times contribute to complex flavors.

However, in order to produce faster, higher yields and prevent the spread of coffee leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), many coffee plantations began to grow coffee under sunnier conditions. The fewer shade trees that are in coffee plantations, the less biodiversity there is in those plantations.

This loss of biodiversity, especially in birds, has led conscientious consumers to look for “shade grown” coffee.  However, coffee is grown under a continuum of conditions, from rustic or traditional, to full sun, and these “shades of shade” are not all equal when it comes to the health of ecosystems. Unfortunately, there is no official definition of “shade grown,” so coffee so labeled may be grown under what are technically shady conditions, but which are little better full  sun.

Categorizing types and levels of shade

It is important to understand the various levels of growing coffee under shade. Here are the five most typical categories, from the most desirable, traditional growing method, to the least diverse, most modern and technified method.

  • Rustic. Often used on small family farms. Coffee is grown in the existing forest with little alteration of native vegetation. Tree species are diverse, with an average of 25 species. Shade strata (layers of vegetation) three or more. Shade cover = 70-100%.
  • Traditional polyculture. Coffee is grown under a combination of native forest trees and planted tree and plant species, including fruit and vegetables both for the farmer and for market, fuel wood, medicinal plants, etc. Common tree species under which coffee is frequently grown include Inga, Grevillea, Acacia, Erythrina, and Gliricidia. Shade cover = 60-90%.
  • Commercial polyculture. More trees removed in order to increase the number of coffee plants, and shade is provided mostly by planted timber and fruit trees. Canopy trees are regularly pruned, and epiphytes are typically removed. More often involves use of fertilizers and pesticides due to the lack of vegetative cover which helps prevent loss of soil nutrients, etc. Typically only two vegetation layers, the canopy, and the coffee. Shade cover 30-60%.
  • Shaded monoculture. Dense plantings of coffee under an overstory of only one or two tree species (usually Inga), which are heavily pruned. Epiphytes are removed. Shade cover = 10-30%.
  • Full sun. Lacks a tree canopy, or has a few isolated trees. No shade cover.

And here is a diagram from a paper by Patricia Moguel and Victor Toledo [1] to help you visualize the categories:

As you can see, coffee grown in a shaded monoculture could technically be labeled “shade grown,” but it would probably not be what the consumer, concerned about biodiversity, is looking for.

Benefits of growing coffee in the shade

The post “The problems with sun coffee” outlines some of the negative environmental impacts of growing coffee in the sun. Here are some of the benefits of growing coffee in the shade:

  • Shade coffee supports biodiversity, and farms can act as wildlife corridors between plots of natural habitat. Numerous studies have shown that the diversity of birds, orchids, bats, ants, amphibians, bees, beetles, spiders, mammals, and other taxa are higher in shaded coffee than in sun coffee.
  • Shade coffee provides pollination services, increasing the fruit set of coffee itself, as well as other plants on the farm.
  • Shade coffee farms have a higher diversity of predators that help control coffee pests (just a few examples of research here, here, and here).
  • Shade coffee typically has fewer weeds. Weeds often require more sunlight and are also controlled by the natural mulch supplied by fallen leaves from the shade trees.
  • Nitrogen-fixing trees on shade coffee farms enrich the soil, as do the fallen leaves from the shade trees.
  • Soil erosion is reduced in shade coffee, also improving soil quality.
  • Shade coffee farms have more stable microclimates and can buffer against temperature and humidity fluctuations caused by climate change.
  • Coffee grown in shade can improve quality.
  • A diversity of shade trees can provide other economic benefits to farmers.

The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has developed standards that are targeted specifically at shade management and preserving biodiversity; their certification is called “Bird-Friendly” (this is a trademarked term and should always carry the Smithsonian seal). More on their criteria here. The Rainforest Alliance has a certification program for coffee that has an array of environmental standards, although shade cultivation is not a requirement. Their optional criteria is compared to the Bird Friendly criteria here.

See also Rice, R. 2010. The ecological benefits of shade-grown coffee: the case for going Bird-Friendly. Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center.

[1] Biodiversity Conservation in Traditional Coffee Systems of Mexico. 1999. Conservation Biology 13:11—21.