JulieCraves

Coffee and the environment / Coffee regions

Uganda’s wild coffee

The Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog beat me to summarizing a recent peer-reviewed paper, Kibale Forest Wild Coffee: Challenges to market-based conservation in Africa (abstract). The paper outlined the (unsuccessful) attempt at creating a market for products based on wild robusta coffee growing in western Uganda’s Kibale National Park.

This nearly 800-sq-km park in the Rift Valley on the border with Congo protects lowland and mid-elevation evergreen and semi-deciduous rainforest. Areas surrounding the park have high human populations, many who rely on subsistence agriculture of mostly plantain, sweet potatoes, and sugar cane. The regional deforestation, save for the park, is evident in the satellite image.

Kibale is very biodiverse, with 11 species of primates, 325 species of birds, and at least 140 species of butterflies. This forested area was highly exploited in the 1970s. Agricultural encroachment destroyed roughly 17% of the area. When Kibale National Park was officially created in 1993, use of the park’s resources by local people were restricted, causing conflicts.

Two species of coffee grow wild in many parts of the park. Coffea eugenioides and C. canephora [1]. The former is widespread but not abundant, while the latter (known as robusta coffee and used commercially in many inexpensive grocery store coffee blends) is less ubiquitous but very abundant where it grows, covering 7800 ha in the park.

The goal of the project was to manage sustainable harvesting of the coffee and provide income for local communities. Ultimately, the harvested robusta would be blended with Ugandan certified organic arabica coffee and, through private sector partnerships, be marketed as Uganda or Kibale Wild Forest Coffee. Appealing enough. The proposed ratio was 10% Kibale robusta to 90% Ugandan organic arabica. This seems a bit low, in my opinion, to really capture the “authenticity” of the product, but was the best deemed feasible.

Things fell apart when the quality of the arabica was not up to snuff, and the harvest yield of the Kibale beans would have resulted in a blend that contained less than 2% wild robusta. That seemed less viable, so other coffee-derived products were considered, but funding ran out and without sales revenue to keep it going, the project withered. You can read more about other factors in the failure in the summary at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog.

The idea was a good one, and the concept of providing local communities with opportunities for sustainable use of the land, including agriculture, in the buffer zones of protected areas is not novel. It’s a typical management strategy in the biosphere reserves of Mexico. An example is the organic, shade-grown coffee produced in the buffer zone of the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve in Chiapas, which by and large been a great success. While it was not without problems or detractors, a lot of this success can be attributed to the commitment in the region by Starbucks, which uses the coffee for its organic shade-grown Mexico variety. I wrote about the project and coffee in this post.

Thus, big buy-in from major players might be needed to truly get a project like this off the ground, and I think the investment is worth it for local people and the environment.

[1] Kasenene, J. 2002. Forest association and phenology of wild coffee in Kibale National Park, Uganda. African Jrl. Ecology 36:241-250.

 

Climate change / Coffee and the environment

Coffee and climate change: updated resources

Here are additional resources related to coffee and climate change, including how climate change may impact coffee production, how growing coffee under shade can buffer against climate change, and how shade coffee and habitat preservation on coffee farms can contribute to carbon sequestration.

 

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Coffee review: Café Choco Andes

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #43.

Coffee reviews have been a little sparse lately. The focus of reviews here is evolving, with an emphasis on educating about corporate coffee, and on sustainable coffees with great backstories or associated projects. This coffee is one of the latter.

Café Choco Andes is about more than just coffee. This project includes multiple international partners working not only to improve coffee quality and move toward organic production methods, but also has reforestation, biodiversity, ecotourism, and educational components. It is part of the larger Choco-Andean corridor project, which seeks to create a network of protected areas, both natural and restored and managed, from northwestern Ecuador to the Pacific coastal mangroves.

Location and background
The Café Choco Andes project takes place in northwest Ecuador. This is an area of very high biodiversity, and the Maquipucuna-Rio Guayllabamba Important Bird Area (IBA) is located here. Over 350 bird species have been recorded in this IBA, including the near-threatened Toucan Barbet (top) and the vulnerable Giant Antpitta (middle). The bulk of the IBA consists of the Maquipucuna Reserve, founded in 1989 by the non-profit Maquipucuna Foundation. The reserve is 6000 ha and located about 50 miles northwest of Quito. It is surrounded by another 14000 ha of protected forest, much of which is undisturbed cloud forest. Altitudes range from 1000 to 2800 meters, thus encompassing coffee-growing zones. It includes an ecolodge and scientific station.

In the late 1990s, the University of Georgia’s School of Ecology and the Maquipucuna Foundation began a project to preserve the area’s biodiversity while improving the livelihoods of residents. Goals included reforestation and creation of forest corridors to improve habitat, especially for migratory birds, and working with coffee farmers to re-establish shade trees and convert to organic production. Over 50,000 coffee trees have been planted since 2000, and over two dozen farms have received organic certification. Other sustainable cottage industries help diversify local income and prevent habitat destruction: beekeeping, paper making, hand-crafted jewelry, jam production, and shade-grown cacao. The project now includes over 160 coffee farmers and 400-plus cacao growers.

The importance of the shade coffee is reflected in research that takes place on these Maquipucuna Foundation-owned lands. A recently published paper [1] by University of Georgia and Foundation researchers looked at the response of resident forest birds to disturbance and canopy cover in this area. It found that 18 species of specialized forest birds sharply declined in areas with less than 21 to 40% canopy cover. The authors noted that this threshold level is the same as the 40% minimum canopy cover recommended for Bird-Friendly and Rainforest Alliance certified coffee.

Around five years ago, additional partners, including the State Botanical Garden of Georgia, the Georgia Museum of Natural History, and the Georgia Environmental Education Alliance established Our Shared Forests (Nuestros Bosques Compartidos in Ecuador). This bi-national education program for schoolkids focuses on awareness of migratory bird species that the two countries share, such as Summer Tanager, Blackburnian Warbler (right), and Red-eyed Vireo.

The coffee
The Macquipucuna Foundation’s coffee is roasted by 1000 Faces Coffee, located in Athens, GA. This particular microlot comes from one of the farms owned by the Foundation that is part of the Café Choco Andes project; Finca Orongo in Pichincha province, near the community of Palmitopamba. At one time, it was completely deforested. It consists of typica and caturra, and is grown at 1400 to 1700 meters.

This coffee is not certified organic or shade-grown, although it is grown under these conditions. Coffee & Conservation readers know that I have mixed feelings about certification, in particular because I don’t believe requiring small producers who grow coffee in perfectly environmentally-sustainable ways should have to pay for it. Many are unable to cover the costs (especially if we as consumers are unwilling to make it worthwhile) or even have the skills and time to manage the paperwork.

The last time we reviewed an Ecuadorian coffee, we weren’t especially impressed. That was a Caribou selection, and it was from Loja. Although it wasn’t a dark roast, it was a tad darker than we tend to like. 1000 Faces roasted this coffee lighter. The roast level indicates medium, but it was on the lighter side. This lighter touch served the coffee well.

This was a solid, middle-of-the-road coffee that reminded us of a good Colombian or Central American coffee. The sweetness was subtle; 1000 Faces describes it as raw honey which seemed apt to me. There was an interesting smoky accent which appealed to some panelists, while others perceived it as ashy. It had a quick and pleasant finish that I associate with a solid, reliable breakfast cup. Nothing else stood out to tasters, but I will say that it was a coffee that seemed to taste better a little further past roast day (at around ten days) than really freshly roasted. It mellowed and had a more rounded and balanced personality, losing some of the ashy notes that we detected at our first tastings. It was much better than the Caribou Ecuadorian selection; we gave it 2.75 motmots.

Read more:

[1] Mordecai, R. S., R. J. Cooper, and R. Justicia. 2009. A threshold response to habitat disturbance by forest birds in the Choco Andean corridor, northwest Ecuador. Biodiversity and Conservation 18:2421-2431.

Toucan Barbet photo by Michael Woodruff via Wikimedia Commons; Giant Antpitta photo by Andy Jones, Cleveland Museum of Natural History; Blackburian Warbler by Petroglyph, all under Creative Commons licenses.

Coffee and the environment / Research on coffee growing

Research: Shade coffee conserves bee diversity

Impacts of coffee agroforestry management on tropical bee communities. 2010. Jha, S. and J. H. Vandermeer. Biological Conservation 143:1423-1431.

Most people are aware of the importance of bees and other pollinators to functioning ecosystems and agriculture. This study took place in Sococusco, Chiapas, Mexico, and looked at what habitat variables were most important to the abundance and diversity of insect pollinators (bees, in this case). It looked at a number of variables — number of tree species, how many were in flower, canopy cover, etc. — and how important they were at different scales (100 m, 500 m, and 1 km). The study took place in small forest fragments and many small shade coffee farms (13 to 70% shade).

Researchers trapped 46 different bee species in these sites, including both social and solitary bees, and cavity-, wood-, and ground-nesting species. They found that habitat management on farms was more predictive of bee abundance than the forest cover in the surrounding landscape at all the three scales. On these farms, tree diversity — the number of tree species — was the best predictor of bee abundance and diversity. The number of tree species flowering and canopy cover were next.

These results are different than many other similar studies. Often, biodiversity in agricultural areas is dependent on the quality and extent of the surrounding landscape, which acts as a source and provides resources for fauna found on farms. Two factors could be influencing the results of the current study. First, this shade coffee region has farms with high structural diversity, and
low regional forest cover, so resources may be more available on farms
than in forests. Second, bee communities in the study area are small-bodied and thus have shorter foraging ranges. They may react more strongly to local resources.

This study indicates that coffee farmers in Chiapas — and in similar landscapes — can attract pollinators and bolster biodiversity by using diverse shade tree species, allowing trees to mature, creating
light gaps, and creating patches of flowering herbaceous plants. Farmers will also benefit from the ecosystem services provided by the bees which will pollinate supplementary crops on the farm in addition to promoting cross-pollination of their coffee (which improves yield).

The authors conclude that coffee farmers don’t need to rely just on the presence of landscape-level forests to provide pollinator resources. They note, “…most coffee cultivators can only implement land-use changes within their own farms… Our study indicates that local habitat factors, managed within agroforestry systems, can have strong impacts on local bee abundance and diversity.”

Augochlora bee, one of the common genera found in this study, by graftedno1 under a Creative Commons license.

Jha, S., & Vandermeer, J. (2010). Impacts of coffee agroforestry management on tropical bee communities Biological Conservation, 143 (6), 1423-1431 DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2010.03.017