JulieCraves

Birds and other biodiversity / Know Your Coffee Birds series

Know your coffee birds: Blue-crowned Motmot

I’d like to inaugurate my “Know your coffee birds” series with the bird Coffee & Conservation uses to rate coffees (e.g., a “five star” coffee here is a “five motmot” coffee): the Blue-crowned Motmot (Momotus momota).

Motmots are a family of New World tropical birds related to kingfishers. Like kingfishers, they nest in burrows which they dig themselves into soil cliffs or road cuts; these burrows are five to up to 14 feet long, and winding. Most motmots are medium-sized (robin size or larger), and are sit-and-wait predators of large insects, small reptiles or mammals and similarly sized prey, along with a little fruit.

The Blue-crowned Motmot is the most widely distributed motmot, and is found from Mexico to Argentina in lowland forests, on up to 1300 meters. It’s fairly tolerant of somewhat disturbed habitats, and thus can be found in open woodlands and second-growth forest such as those found on shade coffee plantations.

Blue-crowned Motmots are about 42 cm long (17 in). Like other motmots, they have a unique spatulate tail. When the new tail feathers grow out, they have an appearance like most other long-tailed birds. But a portion of the lower section of the two center feathers have weakly-attached feather barbs, so these barbs fall off the shaft in short order. This creates a bare stretch of feather shaft, with a paddle-shaped tip at the end. There is evidence that male motmots with longer denuded sections are more attractive to females.

This is peculiar enough, but motmots also swing the tail like the pendulum on a clock, generally in the presence of predators. Despite their size, motmots are often difficult to see until they start wagging their tails. Drawing attention to themselves when a predator is near seems counter-intuitive, but this behavior actually serves to deter the types of predators most likely to go for a motmot: those that rely on stealth and ambush. In essence, a motmot is signalling, “Hey, I see you, and you can’t surprise me.” Ambush predators tend to abandon the hunt when they know they’ve been detected.

I’ve seen several species of motmots in the tropics, including Blue-crowned Motmots at Finca Hartmann. They are among my all-time favorite birds, and a fitting mascot for great sustainable coffee.

Look for more profiles of birds found on coffee farms in the coming months. Many will be species that you can find much closer to home.

Murphy, T. G. 2006. Predator-elicited visual signal: why the turquoise-browed motmot wag-displays its racketed tail. Behavioral Ecology 17:547-553.

Murphy, T. G. 2007. Dishonest preemptive pursuit-deterrent signal? Why the turquoise-browed motmot wags its tail before feeding nestlings. Animal Behaviour 73:965-970.

Murphy, T. G. 2007. Racketed tail of the male and female turquoise-browed motmot: male but not female tail length correlates with pairing success, performance, and reproductive success. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 61:911-918.

Photo of a Blue-crowned Motmot via Wikimedia Commons.

Fair and Direct Trade / Retail and specialty roasters

Counter Culture Coffee’s Direct Trade program

Counter Culture Coffee recently launched its Direct Trade program. It is a natural progression from their Source project, and is a robust example of similar models employed by other roasters, most notably Intelligentsia. Counter Culture is a pioneer, however, in that their Direct Trade coffees are certified by a third party (Quality Certification Services, paid for by Counter Culture).

Here are the standards:

  • Fair and sustainable prices. Counter Culture works with each farmer to determine their production costs and begins price negotiations accordingly. This is the beauty of a direct relationship: many farmers really don’t know how to determine or track their productions costs, and therefore accept pricing that may not realize a profit for themselves. A direct relationship like this Counter Culture model is a true partnership, with the roaster assisting the farmers in calculating, forecasting, and streamlining their production costs. The result: farmers make a good living, roasters have reliable sources of great coffee.Currently, CCC pays a minimum of $1.60/lb. for green coffee; this is expected to rise in 2009. There are also quality-based financial incentives paid to growers on top of this (see below), designed to encourage ecologically-responsible cultivation methods and sustained quality improvement over time.
  • Personal and direct communication. Counter Culture visits grower partners on a biennial basis, at minimum. CCC has an entire section on their web site devoted to posts on trips to origin.
  • Exceptional quality. Direct Trade coffees have scored at least 85 on a 100-pt. cup quality scale. The highest quality coffees are rewarded with higher prices paid to the grower.
  • 100% Transparency. All relevant financial information is is available to all parties — growers, buyers, seller, intermediaries, customers — always.

I think this is a superior model to that of Fair Trade certification in a number of ways. First, of course, is that FT certification only applies to small farmers organized into cooperatives, it is not available to family-owned farms or plantations or single producers. Farmers themselves also do not necessarily receive all or a large portion of any price premiums; this is decided by the cooperative. Second, FT pricing does not take into account any differences in cost of production or cost of living in different regions. Third, FT certification does not certify or verify relationships or communications between producers and roasters or retailer, they only certify the financial transactions between them. Finally, FT does not certify, reward, or incorporate quality into their standards.

Some of Counter Culture’s coffees are also Fair Trade certified, but not labeled as such. And not all Counter Culture coffees will be Direct Trade certified, as it takes some time to work with farmers to get to that level. But the sourcing and purchasing philosophy behind Direct Trade at Counter Culture applies to all their coffees. Congratulations to Counter Culture for this progressive move, which I hope is the future of all coffee sourcing!

Caribbean / Coffee reviews

Coffee review: Barrington Haitian Highlands Ferrace

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #36.

In a previous post, I gave background information on coffee growing on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. We reviewed two selections from the Dominican Republic, and now were on to Haiti.

Haitian Highlands Ferrace, Barrington Coffee Roasting Co.

This is the only non-Haitian Bleu coffee I found, and is a project between Barrington and the non-profit Fondation L’Espoir. The coffee is grown in the Grande-Anse region of Haiti, in the nation’s southwest, by 140 farmers around Pic Macaya, the second highest mountain in Haiti (highest elevation 2347 m). Pic Macaya is one of the most biodiverse and important areas on the entire island. While much of the area is protected, at least on paper, within the Macaya Biosphere Reserve, the area is threatened by subsistence agriculture, charcoal making, and other unsustainable practices. Assisting farmers with

You can view powerful images from Pic Macaya in a slideshow by author and photographer Eladio Fernandez, who is a well known champion of Hispaniolan biodiversity and conservation.

The roast was very light — around 7 or 8 at this visual guide to roast levels by Sweet Maria’s. When I smelled the beans, I thought perhaps too light. Having under-roasted a few beans myself, this sort of grassy aroma was familiar to me.

In the French press, it had a mild, sweet, chocolate taste, with a bright peak when very hot. Despite my trepidation due to the lightness, I was happily surprised, although I was equally pleased with its potential  as its actual taste. Others trying it out noted “bland peanuts,” “cereal, maybe Cheerios,” or a “yeasty-ness”. I believe these are signs of undeveloped flavor from not roasting quite enough. Brewed, it was disappointing, dull and sort of lifeless. The light roast wasn’t too light to spoil it totally, but had the roast gone just a tad further, it would have preserved the soft sweetness and brought out more chocolate and candy notes, eliminated baked goods from the mix, and give it enough oomph to stand up to a drip. I’d be anxious to try a fresh batch (this had no roast date) just a tad darker. I think it would be a super breakfast coffee.

One taster commented, “I’m tasting rioting and political strife.”  No way to roast that out. Overall, we gave it 2.75 motmots.

For another perspective on a non-Haitian Bleu, some rustic dry processed coffee, check out this post at Dan Humphries’ blog.

We’re waiting for a new crop of Haitian Bleu. When that’s available and we can order some, we’ll post a review.

UPDATE, Sep 2008: First, we are still waiting for Haitian Bleu to become available. Meanwhile, Barth Anderson from Barrington sent along the new 2008 crop of Ferrace. Here is a photo of Pic Macaya with the microregions Barrington is working with in the foreground.

We discussed the issue of our perception of a too-light roast. I offered that it was entirely possible that what we felt were flavors due to under-roasting might be part of the character of that bean, and/or that pushing those beans a little farther would be ruinous. Barth explained that Barrington’s goal with their coffees is to find a roast that doesn’t overwhelm the character of each bean and that, indeed, going any further with this Haitian coffee would have “blown out the coffee.”

Overall, I found this crop nicer than the first, although upon our first taste of it we reached the opposite conclusion. We found a really unexpected, sort of plastic or chemical flavor it the cup. Barth explained that they felt there was a rough or unpolished side to this coffee. While it’s possible that this was what we were picking up, the fact that I never came across it in subsequent tastings leads me to think we might have just gotten a bad bean in our first tasting.

Nobody voiced any of the cereal-like or yeasty qualities that we found in the 2007 crop. A few people found it a little thin and lacking in body which ended up offsetting the ratings from those who found it light and sweet and quite nice. For that reason, it ended up with a very similar rating as before — the devil of averages. I did something I don’t often do, which is using this coffee in a blend with a darker roasted bean (in this case, a Brazilian washed coffee), 75% being this light Haitian. I thought it gave it just what it needed, and can offer this as a great option for those who favor a little darker roast.

This is a project and coffee worth supporting, and Barth Anderson and Barrington continue to work to “reveal the extraordinary potential [they] know can exist with this coffee.” Kudos.

Corporate coffee

Responsible Shopper ranks big coffee corporations

When I write about corporate coffee, I often refer or link to Co-op America’s Responsible Shopper corporate profiles.  They’ve now done summaries of many industries, comparing top companies in broad categories, including grading the largest coffee corporations. Companies get a letter grade, and are color-coded to boot.

The list includes the big four, plus Starbucks. Starbucks is a big player in the coffee industry, but frankly not in the same league as the other multinationals. It deserves
a fair amount of criticism in some areas, but I believe Starbucks doesn’t receive due credit for its role in heightening awareness of specialty coffee and weaning the public away from the multinationals.

As for the other four, letter grades for the Environment category are:

  • Kraft = “n/i.” This is undefined. No information? C’mon. I’ll provide a generous one, based relative to the grades Co-op America is providing: C.
  • Sara Lee = C-.
  • Procter & Gamble = n/i. My grade: D-
  • Nestle = F (it got this failing grade across the board for various corporate responsibility categories).

[Unfortunately, these profiles are no longer available.]