Certifications

Certifications

Why certifying shade coffee is so complex

After visiting some coffee farms in Panama’s western highlands, I have some thoughts regarding shade certification programs.

There are pros and cons of various certifications. And as I frequently note here on C&C, farms lacking certifications may easily meet or exceed criteria but can’t afford audit and certification fees. Finca Hartmann, which I discussed in my previous post, is not certified organic or shade grown. In part, they do not qualify because they use an herbicide once a year and also use some non-organic fertilizer. A Hartmann family member also told me that they did look into shade certification, but were not given help or support by the certifier so they gave up on it.

Aside from affordability, I can now easily see the huge hurdles and complications involved in certifying farms as biodiversity-friendly, both for the farmers and for the certifying agencies. Nearly all the coffee growing areas we encountered were complex amalgamations of habitats and management types which appear to be very challenging to evaluate and categorize, especially farms like Finca Hartmann that grow coffee in matrix of forest types and with other crops. Ironically, it seems the larger and more uniform a farm, the easier it would be to certify. If environmental criteria were not strict, certification would be relatively straightforward.

What would be more meaningful (although perhaps not especially practical or achievable at this time) would be some sort of ranking system or disclosure of key habitat and management components. Some of these elements might be:

  • Total farm property, and percent in infrastructure, native forest, pasture, coffee, other crops, and mixed use.
  • Range and average acreage of coffee plots (e.g., of the 70 ha of coffee on a farm, it is distributed in 30 plots of 1 to 12 ha, average 7 ha).
  • Range and average acreage of natural forest habitat, and whether or not is it permanently preserved.
  • Number of species of shade trees, top 5 species (with scientific names, since there are so many local variations of common names), and some measure of density or distribution. I include this latter component because it speaks to whether coffee is grown under shade versus near shade. Some shade certification criteria include a rule that there must be a certain number of shade trees per hectare. Yet one could have the requisite number of “shade” trees in a clump, adjacent to a patch of coffee grown entirely in the sun. This might not be entirely bad — and indeed we saw birds using tree patches like this and wandering over to forage in the coffee, especially if the patches were substantial, native, and contained a variety of vegetation. But that may not offer the same types of foraging opportunity as coffee integrated with taller vegetation. This is likely to vary widely regionally and on a smaller landscape scale.
  • Number of shade layers. This type of multi-layer diversity is very important. The more layers, the closer it gets to the native forest it displaces. That being said, the lack of uniformity and apparent variety of management types over a farm could make this very difficult to evaluate.
  • Whether the farm used 1) pesticides, 2) herbicides, 3) non-organic fertilizer, and how often. The latter two when used sparingly are not as damaging to the environment as pesticides, yet they currently may all get lumped under “non-organic” practices.
  • Water treatment and waste recycling procedures.
  • The exact coordinates of the farm. With the coverage and resolution of applications like Google Earth, one can get a good idea of land use by looking at satellite photos.
  • Some quantitative data on fauna, emphasizing forest-dependent species, if it can be provided by people with some type of ecological expertise.

Farms or co-ops might be able provide this type of information on their web sites (or roasters could include it on their offerings pages) in some sort of standardized format. This information could help consumers assess the eco-friendliness of their coffee sources.

Of course, this type of data is fairly meaningless to the average consumer. An additional requirement would be a central reference web site explaining the variables and their importance. This material could be freely used by roasters on their web sites. This central site could also keep a database of links and summaries of farm information (in a small way, it’s what I try to do here at C&C).

This Internet based system would be quite simple and inexpensive; importers and roasters with relationships with farms and co-ops could easily get this out on the web. One obvious shortcoming is that it requires consumers to put forth some effort by looking something up on the Internet. The pertinent data doesn’t end up on a retail bag of coffee in some simple-to-interpret seal or ranking. Yet, it’s hard for me to imagine how a ranking system would work, since whoever is doing the evaluation would run into the same sorts of problems trying to assign simple, discreet values to complex systems.

These are just some thoughts, based on what I’ve seen and the types of information that I, as an ecologist, try to suss out when I choose a coffee.

Finally, I’d like to point out the other side of the coin via a spot-on observation made by the Bean Activist’s Chris O’Brien in the comments on my Counter Culture Finca Mauritania Microlots review. He points out that it doesn’t make sense that the burden of proof of sustainability is on the farmers.

“It seems backwards that we force the ‘good guys’ to pay to prove their goodness instead of charging the ‘bad guys’ for being bad. Ultimately I think it comes down to the need for policy changes, in producer countries as well as consumer countries. The full sun, low-price, chemical coffee estates should be the ones paying extra fees for violating basic minimum standards for sustainability and equity.”

I wholeheartedly agree with this. But since the biggest producers of sun coffee are also much stronger, larger, and more powerful than the producers of shade coffee, I think this will be a hard row to hoe. And I believe so long as there is a demand for cheap technified coffee, it will continued to be produced, especially if the disincentives to the producers don’t make it unprofitable. Once again, for the moment, we are left with educating consumers so that they can hopefully begin to influence the market with their buying power.

Birds and other biodiversity / Certifications

What shade coffee looks like

One trip to one part of one county’s coffee growing region is limited information to work with. Nonetheless, my recent visit to the western highlands of Panama was an eye-opener, replacing a mental image based on a great deal of reading and examining photographs with the reality on the ground.  I’d like to share some of what I learned.

First, a little overview of the entire landscape. The highest point in Panama is in the western highlands: Volcan Baru, at nearly 3500 m (almost 12000 ft). The town of Volcan is on one flank of the volcano, Boquete is on the other. These are Panama’s major coffee-growing areas, some of the most important in the world. Coffee is not the exclusive crop, however. Many cool season crops are grown here. We were on the Volcan side, where cabbage, lettuce, and onions were common, as well as dairy farms. Small farms and plots were everywhere, creeping up the flanks of the mountains. Most were not large, and from what we could gather by observing harvesting and taking crops to central depots, tended by one to several families. We have urban sprawl. They have a sort of agricultural sprawl.

Definitions of shade-grown coffee describe various systems that go from very rustic (coffee in a forest) to sun coffee (plots of coffee with no shade trees). I talk about this continuum in my introductory post “What is shade-grown coffee” and provide a graphic in a later post on shade certification criteria. Coming from an industrialized country with industrialized agriculture, where even small garden plots nearly always follow an orderly, genteel, Euro-centric plan, I really didn’t consider how “messy” agrosystems are in Latin America. We spent a lot of time on one coffee finca, lesser amounts in two others, and passed through a number of others. The various levels of shade management are present, but they can be difficult to categorize as they are often interspersed with each other and other types of land use (crops, livestock, homesteads).

We spent two half-days at Finca Hartmann, a very eco-friendly farm near Santa Clara. It is in two sections: the lower Palo Verde section (1200-1300m), and the higher-altitude Ojo de Agua section (1500+ m), which is directly adjacent to the La Amistad International Park. The property (aside from housing and other human infrastructure) is a mix of remnant and regenerating forest, pasture, and coffee.  Coffee occurs in plots ranging from 1 to 15 ha, and itself grows intermixed with native vegetation and/or crops such as citrus and bananas. This photo shows some fairly young coffee (probably 2-5 years old; the Hartmann’s are in the process of replanting much of the farm which was established in the 1950s) at Palo Verde, shaded by citrus, castor, and native trees. We had a large mixed flock of birds here, including forest birds such as White-ruffed Manakin and Bay-headed Tanager.

In another area in Palo Verde, older coffee trees are growing amid a mid-story of bananas, and an open canopy of tall native trees, encrusted with many epiphytes — which are very important to biodiversity in tropical agrosystems.

The Hartmann’s have preserved a lot of forest on their land. Below, my husband consults a field guide in a beautiful forested patch along a stream. There is extensive old forest at Ojo de Agua which many researchers have used to study forest and shade coffee ecosystems.

Nearly 300 species of birds have been recorded at Finca Hartmann, as well as 62 mammal species and hundreds of other organisms. Patriarch Ratibor Hartmann is a devoted naturalist, and visitors can examine some  carefully-curated collections he has made on the farm. We photographed many insects ourselves. One was a damselfly that had only been described about 30 years ago, and had never been photographed, according to an expert back here in the states.

Other insects were just stunning, such as this metalmark, Mesosemia asa. Although we really only explored for 6 or 7 hours over the two days, were working without a guide, and spent equal amounts of time looking at insects, we observed nearly 80 species of birds at Finca Hartmann.

Other farms in the region were in contrast with Finca Hartmann. The photo below is from Finca Florentina near Paso Ancho, a large plantation that has been a source of beans for Starbucks. This farm also had patches of forest, but coffee typically grew in larger plots than at Finca Hartmann.

Still at Finca Florentina, an even larger plot of coffee, with sparser large trees. This area had a lot of non-native eucalyptus trees. We wandered through these areas for several hours, and saw far fewer species of birds and insects. Many were more common species typical of open areas, such as various species of grassquits, or the ubiquitous Rufous-collared Sparrow.

And along a road near Santa Clara, were big areas of sun coffee. These farms are likely owned by or sell their beans to the large Cafe Duran, which is a common brand in Panama. Their mill was nearby.

None of the coffee growing areas we saw came close to matching the structural complexity of native forest, a characteristic that is highly important to biodiversity. Nonetheless, it was clear that birds and other fauna used coffee growing areas that were integrated with or close to native vegetation.

This gave me a great deal of insight into the issue of shade certification, and I will talk about that in my next post (Why certifying shade coffee is so complex).

Certifications / Retail and specialty roasters

Green Earth Coffee: A cautionary tale

[July 2008 update at bottom of post] I recently received an inquiry about Green Earth Coffee Company, which sells several varieties of Costa Rican coffee promoted as eco-friendly. This struck a reader as at odds with my post on how coffee is typically grown in that country. All of Green Earth’s Costa Rican coffees are noted as being organic and eco-friendly or shade grown (a term with no legal definition). The Dota coffee is listed as being certified as Bird-Friendly by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC), but according to SMBC, it is not.

There are no Costa Rican producers now certified by SMBC. I double-checked with SMBC regarding the Green Earth coffee, and was told that they “had never heard of this company.” SMBC proceeded to send two or three e-mails asking for proof of certification to Green Earth, but after over two weeks had gotten no response. So, the source for the Green Earth coffee being advertised as certified Bird-Friendly either never had certification, had certification that has lapsed, or has been certified by one of SMBC’s certifying partners who in turn did not notify SMBC. The latter is unlikely as it is a big no-no, risking the reputation of the agency, and not useful to the farm if they aren’t listed as being certified.

Another thing I discovered: Green Earth actively seeks donations and notes that a portion of the profits from some of their coffees go to humanitarian causes. It turns out that all of the non-profit partners and projects I could find connected to this company are evangelical Christian missionary organizations. Green Earth owner Randy Sperger is referred to on the Adventures in Missions web site as “our missionary friend” working on providing basic medical care to some indigenous people in Costa Rica. The post went on to say “Over the longer term the goal is to provide housing and start the process of sharing the gospel.”

I could find no reference on the Green Earth web site is Christianity, religion, or missionary work mentioned. If they want to promote their brand of religion by selling coffee, donating profits, and soliciting donations, fine. But personally I think it’s dishonest or misleading to not explicitly indicate the strong religious component to much of their work, especially when they are working with tribes such as the Maleku, who are struggling to hold on to their original traditions and culture, which surely does not include Christian religious practices.

I will amend this post should I receive an update on the status of the certification. This situation is a reminder that if you are unsure about the certification claims, you should check with the certifier:

  • Smithsonian “Bird-Friendly” — The list of certified producers on the SMBC web site is kept current.  The term “Bird-Friendly” is trademarked by SMBC, and coffee advertised as Bird-Friendly must carry their seal.
  • Rainforest Alliance — This page lists the crops, including coffee, certified by Rainforest Alliance (RA), and you can download all the certified producers of each crop. The lists are updated monthly.

If you have any questions about a particular source and are having problems verifying claims, drop me a line and I will do my best to help.

UPDATE: On 31 July 2008, I received information from Randolph Sperger of Green Earth Coffee. Here are the portions of his email that explained why his Dota coffee was advertised as Smithsonian Bird-Friendly when it was not listed on the Smithsonian web site as such:

We purchased our Dota — Tarrazu from Arturo Segura at the Sol Colibri farm.  Their coffee is certified organic and I was informed by him that it was Smithsonian certified. I told him upon purchase  that if I could not say that in my advertising, I didn’t want to buy the coffee because we wanted Bird-Friendly coffee. He said it was. I believed him.

According to Mr. Segura when I called him about the problem he confessed to me that he had let his certification expire.  He assured me that he would take care of it.  I  believed him. [When I contacted him] he said that indeed the coffee he sold us and his farm, though qualified in 70% as Bird-Friendly, is not certified.  He decided not to go through with the certification process due to expense and burrocratic [sic] compliances. That leaves us with the proverbial egg on the face. As a result I have made the first steps in changing our web page. I am very ashamed of this error and have learned a great lesson about requiring paper work.

I appreciate your concern regarding the possible lack of certification of our coffee. That has forced me,  in the middle of an extremely busy schedule to follow through with Mr. Segura. Thanks for that.

As of 12 August 2008, the Dota coffee is referred to as mostly “Eco-Friendly” with a stray instance of “Bird-Friendly,” but there is no mention of Smithsonian certification any longer.

Certifications / Coffee regions / Organic coffee

Kenya producing more organic coffee

A recent article notes that more producers in central Kenya are turning to organic coffee in order to take advantage of price premiums. This is welcome news, as over the last 15 years or so, Kenya has been one of the heaviest users of pesticides on its export crops, with around 60% of its pesticide use on coffee (primarily the large estates). The FAO reports that in 2001 (last year full data is available) Kenya used 303 metric tons of insecticides on its crops (215 of which were nasty organophosphates) versus 153 in Ethiopia and 69 in Rwanda.

Inadequate training, sanitation, and protective gear meant workers and the environment suffered from contamination. Less than 1% of Kenya’s total agricultural area is now organic, but organic agriculture stakeholders have formed the Kenya Agriculture Organic Network to support the successful growth of the sector.