Certifications

Certifications / Coffee regions / Smithsonian Bird-Friendly

Bird-friendly Galapagos Island coffee

The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center has just announced that it has certified Hacienda El Cafetal coffee from the Galapagos Islands as Bird-Friendly, the most eco-friendly certification for coffee. Galapagos coffee has been on my “to try” list for quite awhile. SMBC has just given me more impetus to get some and give it a sip.

This is obviously an exotic origin, and the story is interesting. Hacienda El Cafetal is grown on the easternmost Galapagos island, San Cristobal. With around 7,000 people, San Cristobal has the largest population, and is also the only island with fresh water springs. Hacienda El Cafetal grows arabica coffee of the heirloom bourbon variety at the unimpressive altitude of 500 meters. However, the microclimate there offers conditions that are equivalent to 1200 to 1300 meters elsewhere, owing to the cold Humboldt ocean current which sweeps past the islands. Of course, the soils are volcanic on the Galapagos, some of the best for growing coffee.

Coffee was brought to the Galapagos Islands around 1870 — and these are the some of the same trees that are still producing beans. Hacienda El Cafetal covers about 400 ha within the small area — roughly 3% of the entire archipelago — that is not within the boundaries of the national park and thus where agriculture is allowed. As most chemicals are prohibited anywhere in the archipelago, the coffee is certified organic (which is also a required criteria for Bird-Friendly certification).

Hacienda El Cafetal is not the only coffee producer in the Galapagos; coffee  is also grown on the island of Santa Cruz. Typically about 200 metric tons of coffee are produced annually (although not all is specialty-grade), and the legal limit is 300 metric tons. Organic agriculture is an important source of income for island residents, especially as fisheries become depleted, and organic crops help reduce the need to import so much fresh food and minimize the introduction of invasive species that arrive in these shipments. Conservation organizations also hope that diversified organic agriculture can help with native plant restoration. Coffee grown under native shade trees is a perfect fit for this goal. A short article on the sustainability of the coffee industry in the Galapagos is available in the spring 2008 newsletter (pdf) of the Galapagos Conservancy.

Galapagos coffee isn’t too terribly hard to find, but not all of it is great, and it is often a bit expensive. Most is certified organic, but so far Hacienda El Cafetal is the only farm certified Bird-Friendly. Our friends at Barrington Coffee Roasters have carried Hacienda El Cafetal in the past but it is currently out of stock. A Google search for it should turn some up, though. We’ll review it here in the future!

Certifications

Discontent with certifications

In my post about the Coffee Conference, I noted that one of the most interesting things I came away with was the general displeasure many participants had with coffee certifications. Both Rainforest Alliance and TransFair USA (the Fair Trade certifiying organization in the US) had representatives at the conference. RA’s Bethany Koch (Client Relations Manager) and TransFair’s Kim Moore (Director of Business Development, Coffee and Beverages) both gave presentations that provided current statistics on the amount of coffee certified by each agency, and their various partners.

Participants had several bones of contention.

  • Conflict between the mission of the organizations and their corporate partners. Specifically mentioned were RA’s partnership with Chiquita bananas and Kraft, and both organizations with Walmart. These companies have had very checkered pasts (or presents) and their histories and behavior struck people as highly at odds with the principles behind these certifications. Several people were strident about the hypocrisy of purporting to help small farmers considering Chiquita’s role in destroying the Caribbean banana farming industry. I thought one questioner’s hair was going to catch fire. Likewise, Walmart has faced a lot of criticism about unfair treatment of it’s own workers. Moore’s response regarding Walmart was that Fair Trade is concerned with the producers, not the retailers. Further, he said that all big companies had some dark holes in their pasts, and in essence that TransFair/Fair Trade wanted to look forward and not back. Likewise, people were disturbed by the fact that large roasters such as Kraft can use only 30% Rainforest Alliance certified beans and still put the RA seal on the bag (albeit with a disclaimer). Koch replied with the answer that I have received before from RA. First, that there isn’t enough supply to satisfy the huge demand of  large roasters. However, minutes prior she showed a graph indicating supply was larger than demand, a gap RA strove to maintain so that there would always be enough certified beans. I can only surmise that there isn’t enough supply that matches Kraft’s “flavor” profile. And second, although the volume of certified beans purchased by Kraft (20,000 metric tons in 2007) is a small fraction of their total purchases, RA believes that this makes a huge difference on the ground, and that changing the way a large and influential coffee company does business is a big step in the right direction. This “30% rule” is worthy of a post all of its own. Suffice to say that overall, people did not seem satisfied with these responses.
  • Fair Trade prices are too low. The Fair Trade floor price was recently raised to a modest $1.25/lb (there is also a $0.10 social premium that does not necessarily go to the farmer), only $0.11 higher than when it was established in 1988. Producers at the conference noted several times that it was not adequate to compensate for the rising cost of production. This same conclusion was drawn by Daniel Jaffee in his excellent book Brewing Justice: Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability, and Survival.
  • Exclusionary policies of Fair Trade. Fair Trade certification is only available to cooperatives, not to individual small farmers or larger plantations (and therefore does not protect temporary workers at these locations). Further, Moore revealed that even many cooperatives do not qualify for Fair Trade certification. A representative of the PEARL project questioned the wisdom of small cooperatives in Rwanda participating in Fair Trade since the cost of the certification itself was a large percentage of revenues for these producers which still had low outputs. Moore’s answer was direct and honest, but made more than a few people squirm. He noted that co-ops needed to be commercially viable entities in order to qualify for certification. He said that Fair Trade is not a beginning intervention point and “Fair Trade is not for the very most in-need farmers.”

Geoff Watts pointed out that Fair Trade uses promotional language that “glorifies” cooperatives and implies that private sector efforts are evil. I’ll add that this applies to other certifications, which often urge buyers to only buy certified coffee (whatever seal is being promoted) as the only ethical choice. Watts said this leads consumers who want to do the right thing away from choices that might do the most good (e.g., Direct Trade initiatives). Indeed, in private conversations I had with some of the small retail roasters in attendance, all told me that they have had customers in their shops who demand coffee with a Fair Trade seal and didn’t even want to hear about directly-sourced coffees from farms that had been paid more than the Fair Trade price. As Jaffee asks in his book,

“What good will it do to have Nestlé displaying the fair-trade seal on a tiny portion of its coffee if the company ultimately succeeds in confusing consumers and undermining their confidence in the integrity of fair trade overall”?

As evidenced by opinions expressed at this conference, the integrity of these seals has already been diluted or compromised. Their success depends not only on the support of consumers, but also roasters and retailers. TransFair and Rainforest Alliance need to examine adopting some sort of tiered certification system that differentiates between products that are truly 100% certified, and those that are part of a limited effort. Brands which use only small portions of certified beans should be required to increase by a set percent over a specified time period, and all these actions should be transparent to the public.

Further, I believe that large corporations (the big roasters) should bear the burden of the costs of certifying the producers. These costs — initially $2000 to $4000 plus regular inspections — prevent many producers from ever getting certified in the first place, locking them out of these markets. The multinationals can well afford to cover these expenses. This will also have the added benefit of acting as an investment by these corporations in their suppliers, providing, one hopes, some long-term stability. I’d also like to see some sort of additional fee paid by these large companies, for as long as their certified supply remains under a particular level, that would help subsidize the fees of other farmers.

Socially and environmentally responsible seals have worthy standards and great missions, but their success depends on goodwill and trust. What I found intriguing was that this was a left-leaning crowd, the type that typically supports, and even helped found, these certification movements. It’s a shame to see this trust eroding.

Certifications / Coffee reviews / Rainforest Alliance

Coffee Review covers Rainforest Alliance coffees

Kenneth Davids’ excellent Coffee Review takes on Rainforest Alliance coffees for its September reviews. Please go read his concise and insightful introduction to the reviews. He provides a good overview of the RA program and how it differs from Fair Trade, how they complement each other, and RA’s efforts to adapt their standards to different cultures and types of coffee organizations.

Davids makes a couple of interesting observations about the RA coffees submitted by roasters for the reviews. Two dozen roasters submitted 34 single-origin RA-certified coffees, but they only represented eleven producers. Familiar RA producers Daterra Estate in Brazil, Panama’s Hacienda La Esmeralda, Selva Negra estate in Nicaragua, and the Mesa de los Santos farm in Colombia (which is also certified Smithsonian Bird-Friendly) were all in the mix.

In addition to the twelve submitted coffees that were reviewed, Davids threw in a review of Kraft’s Yuban coffee, which contains 30% RA-certified beans. The rest, based on his trained palate, is cheap robusta:

Based on a reading of cup profile, the blend we cupped (Yuban Original) probably contains enough Brazil from Rainforest Alliance Certified farms to qualify for the certification seal, with a good part of the remainder of the blend inexpensive robustas, perhaps steamed to remove flavor taints. The result is a Rainforest Alliance Certified version of the bland, woody, faintly sweet supermarket profile that has come to dominate canned coffee shelves over the last two decades.

I understand the theory behind RA working with Kraft or other multinationals to get them to buy more certified beans. However, I think there is a serious problem with consumers thinking that this is a truly sustainable coffee if 70% of the beans are not certified, and likely cheap, sun-grown beans grown with chemicals. Nor do I think RA is doing itself any favors by putting its seal on crappy-tasting supermarket coffees, especially when it is highly likely to be the first or only RA-certified coffee consumers will encounter.

Go enjoy the reviews and give some of the coffees a try — just skip the Yuban.

Fair and Direct Trade

Sweet Maria’s Farm Gate Coffee

Green coffee and home roasting supplier Sweet Maria’s has formalized their direct trade buying program, calling it Farm Gate Coffee. Farm Gate prices are at least 50% (but often 100% or more) over Fair Trade prices. Their latest newsletter gives a more thorough explanation.

Even if you don’t roast your own coffee, head over to the Sweet Maria’s web site. I have learned so much there — not only in the coffee library, but also reading the bean reviews and descriptions and the many travelogues that are sprinked throughout the site. It’s a real education!

Certifications / Climate change / Coffee and the environment / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance introduces carbon module

In my post “Coffee farms and carbon sequestration,” I discussed the potential of carbon credits in helping coffee farmers earn extra income, and provided some statistics and references on carbon sequestration on coffee farms in and other tropical agroforestry systems.

As it turns out, Rainforest Alliance (RA) will be adding a carbon module to their certification for farms (coffee, and presumably other crops they certify). This announcement was first made in May at their Sustainable Coffee Breakfast at the SCAA annual conference in Minneapolis. The details are not final, but here is what RA’s Gretchen Ruethling explained to me regarding RA’s past experience and future plans:

We are working with other organizations to help farmers get paid for providing environmental services such as storing carbon and protecting watersheds and biodiversity. The Rainforest Alliance is a registered verifier for leading carbon offset programs including the Climate, Community & Biodiversity Alliance and the Chicago Climate Exchange. We have verified carbon offsets on coffee farms through projects organized by Plan Vivo in Mexico. We verified an ambitious project in Aceh, Indonesia developed by Fauna & Flora International that will reduce deforestation on 750,000 hectares of rainforest. We verified a reforestation project in the highly endangered Atlantic Forest of Brazil as a carbon offset for Jacques Vabre, a coffee brand in France. (That project is managed by a coalition of Brazilian NGOs and led by the Nature Conservancy.)

We are working to offer more incentives to coffee farmers to encourage them to plant more trees. One exciting idea is developing a system that would allow coffee companies to buy carbon from farmers along with their coffee beans — through the existing supply chains. Companies could pay a small carbon premium. In order for this to work, we need a simple, low-cost yet rigorous and highly credible method to estimate the carbon on a coffee farm and verify that it remains year after year. This could be done by auditing the carbon as part of the annual farm inspection by members of the Sustainable Agriculture Network.

I’m thrilled RA is pursuing this concept — it’s a win-win-win situation for the farmer, biodiversity, and the planet.

Certifications

What is the market share of eco-certified coffee?

Certified coffees (organic, Fair Trade, Bird-Friendly, Rainforest Alliance, Utz, and Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices) make up only about 4% of world green coffee exports, or about 220,000 metric tons. The U.S. is a major importer of various types of certified coffee, which make up nearly 8% of green bean imports. Let’s take a quick look at the market share* and growth of the three certification labels that focus largely on ecological standards: organic, Rainforest Alliance, and Bird-Friendly.

Organic
North America imports around half of the world’s organic coffee. In 2006, this amounted to 30,000 metric tons, a 56% increase over 2005.  In 2007, sales reached $1 billion, with 38,000 metric tons representing a 29% increase from the previous year. Still, organic coffee is less than 3% of the total North American market. Farmers receive about a 20% premium (average $0.24/lb) over the C market commodity price of coffee. Nearly 80% of the Fair Trade coffee sold in the U.S. is also certified organic. All Bird-Friendly coffee (see below) is certifed organic.

Rainforest Alliance
As of late 2007, Rainforest Alliance (RA) had certified over 200,000 ha of coffee on nearly 17,000 farms; total production was around 40,000 metric tons. Their website currently states that 1.3% of the world’s coffee is RA-certified. The U.S. is the largest importer of RA-certified coffee, acquiring just over 40%, while Europe is not far behind. In 2006, RA-certified coffee was less than 1% of the total North American market, about 12,000 metric tons. RA is growing rapidly, with 100% average annual growth the last several years. RA does not specify a price premium, but farmers receive about 10 cents a pound over the C market price.

Bird-Friendly
Bird-Friendly is the shade certification of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC). As of May 2008, it certified 28 producers growing on 7200 ha. Production is less than 3100 metric tons. This is a very small market share, and only a relatively small portion of the total production is sold labeled as Bird-Friendly. In 2006 this was less than 200 metric tons out of 3600 produced. Farmers receive a premium between 5 and 10 cents a pound, on top of the premium for the organic certification (Bird-Friendly coffee must also be certified organic).

The graphic below (click to enlarge) is a shot of a slide from a talk I attended by SMBC’s Robert Rice at the SCAA annual meeting and gives some sense of relative production and overlap in a variety of certified coffees.

As the numbers indicate, though, if there was a circle on the diagram representing mainstream commercial coffee, it would dwarf those of the certified coffees. Sustainable coffees are still a niche market.

What drives the market? Interestingly, a 2001 survey of the North American specialty coffee industry asked coffee business owners to rate the importance of various factors to their buying/selling choices for sustainable coffee. The most important was quality, but next to last was consumer awareness. Author Daniele Giovannucci notes, “This is an interesting indication that consumer demand may not currently be the primary driving force behind the sustainable coffee market. There are indications that the industry itself has played the key role in developing sustainable coffee markets by first providing the supply.”

This doesn’t mean the coffee industry wouldn’t respond to consumer demand; I think it would only enhance market growth in sustainable coffee. Let’s grow those eco-certified coffee circles!

Update: Other more recent data on market share of certified coffees:

*Not all certified coffee gets sold as such – some may be blended with non-certified coffee, the buyer may be interested in other attributes besides the certification and purchases it without intending to market it as certified, or other reasons. The estimated figures are market share of coffee actually sold as certified, not the amount of certified coffee produced under each scheme.

Sources. I had the pleasure of attending a talk by poverty and agriculture expert Daniele Giovannucci at the SCAA meeting. He is the author of the sources of the information used in this post.

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.

Giovannucci, D. and A. Villalobos. 2007. The State of Organic Coffee: 2007 U.S. Update (PDF). CIMS: San Jose, Costa Rica.

Giovannucci, D. and F. J. Koekoek. 2003. The State of Sustainable Coffee: A study of twelve major markets. International Coffee Organization, International Institute for Sustainable Development and UNCTAD.

Giovannucci, D. 2001. Sustainable Coffee Survey of the North American Specialty Coffee Industry. Working paper commission by The Summit Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation, Specialty Coffee Association of America, The World Bank.

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!

Certifications / Coffee news and miscellany / Rainforest Alliance

Rainforest Alliance partners with the Coffee Quality Institute

A Problem
Judging by the enormous market shares of the Big Four corporate coffee multinationals, a lot of people don’t mind drinking lousy tasting coffee. However, plenty of people won’t do it. But more imporantly, if it doesn’t taste better, a lot of folks are not going to pay extra for certified coffee, and these coffees nearly always carry a premium. I’m not even willing to fork over more cash just for an eco-friendly label if the coffee is mediocre. If I can’t drink tasty, sustainable coffee, I just don’t drink it — although I’m as addicted as the next person. Unfortunately, I’m an exception.

Here’s the nasty truth: Even people who profess to caring about the environment tend to default to habitat-destroying, cheap coffee produced with tons of chemicals if there isn’t sufficient motivation to switch.  If they try a certified coffee and it doesn’t taste any better than the stuff they’ve been drinking, they don’t bother to buy it again.

A Partnership
That’s why it’s good news that the fastest growing and most familiar eco-labeller, Rainforest Alliance (RA), has inked an agreement with the non-profit Coffee Quality Institute (CQI). Among other things, this partnership will integrate CQI’s standardized coffee quality standards into RA’s tracking and traceability software and promote those standards within RA’s sustainable agriculture program. On a practical level, it means coffee buyers (importers, roasters, and consumers) will have some objective benchmark (the Q coffee score) indicating the quality of the coffee, as well as the flavor profile.

For the last five years, RA has had annual Cupping for Quality events and cupping competitions organized by CQI. These events and awards really help highlight the fact that sustainably-grown coffees can have amazing flavor, worthy of purchasing just for their taste alone. This partnership should really help buyer awareness and enhance interest in the quality of sustainable coffee.

A Conundrum
I’m not sure how RA will reconcile this commitment to quality — with an emphasis in this case on taste — with their partnerships with big corporate roasters like Kraft. Kraft’s Yuban coffee is 30% RA certified, and has been described by Ken Davids, one of the most respected coffee evaluators in the world, as “Cloyingly sweet, earthy/mildewed character with very distinct grassy notes.” This same review says that those who should drink Yuban are “on a budget with a commitment to organic growing principles that transcends the desire to drink decent coffee.” One could argue that the high-quality RA certified beans are being overwhelmed by the remaining 70%, mildewy, grassy, earthy, who-knows-where-they-come-from beans. But that certainly defeats the purpose. This odd dichotomy — fine work in environmentally and socially sustainable, high quality coffee, alongside helping corporate giants buff their green image by permitting their seal on products containing as little as 30% certified beans — produces not a small amount of cognitive dissonance among coffee lovers, myself included. This will eventually be the subject of its own post.

SCAA flavor wheel photo by AndyCiordia under a Creative Commons license.

Certifications / Coffee regions / Smithsonian Bird-Friendly

SMBC certifies its first African coffees

Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) recently certified its first Bird-Friendly coffee outside of Latin America: Anfilo Specialty Coffee Enterprise (SCE). This group of 118 farmers in the district of Wollega, in the sub-districts of Anfilo and Gidami in far western Ethiopia, grows nearly 600 ha of “forest coffee.” This coffee grows in natural forest at elevations of 1800 to 2400 m near the Gerjeda Forest Reserve (which I’m unable to find information about). These areas are crucial to preserve wild genetic coffee resources.

Coffee from this part of the country (also marketed as Lekempti or Nekempt coffee) generally has large beans, mild fruit flavors (less berry, more stone fruit), and medium body. You can view a professional, 15-minute video about coffee growing in this rather removed area of the country at this site. This video was produced by the brother of the man who owns and manages Afilio SCE.

I see that the SMBC site also now lists a second Ethiopian producer, Mullege PLC. As far as I know, this is an export company with at least ten wet mills in a number of regions.

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.

Fair and Direct Trade

Fair Trade news

This blog focuses on sustainable coffee specifically as it pertains to the environment. I’ve written some about Fair Trade, because there is a connection between poverty and environmental degradation. But Fair Trade is complex, and the issues surrounding Fair Trade coffee alone are numerous. There are many blogs that focus exclusively on Fair Trade, and C&C will continue to deal more with science and leave the economics to the others. But October is Fair Trade month, and there have been several interesting articles on Fair Trade in the media lately. I’d like to just point out a couple.

  • Fair Trade in bloom — New York Times. Discusses the increase in consumer demand for FT products, and how many big companies are jumping on the bandwagon. Specifically highlighted are Sam’s Club and its Brazilian supplier, Cafe Bom Dia. I’ve already written about Cafe Bom Dia. It is an enormous operation. It’s hard for me to believe Bom Dia cannot pay their farmers more than FT prices. I think the Times article is worthwhile to read along with last year’s piece by the Organic Consumers Organization, Wal-Mart’s attempt to sell the “cheapest Fair Trade coffee in America” generates skepticism.
  • Fair Trade coffee price unchanged after 10 years — National Post (Canada). After a recent increase of US$0.05/lb in the social premium (which goes to communities for schools, clinics, etc.), the minimum price for FT coffee paid to the cooperatives is $1.31/lb. When FT pricing was established, coffee was trading around $0.60/lb. Today, when I checked the market price (“C” coffee futures on the NYBOT), it was trading at $1.36/lb, and yesterday’s composite indicator price (how calculated) for arabicas was around $1.40/lb.The FT price is indexed to the market price; it rises to $0.05/lb above the market price if it reaches the FT minimum. I’m not sure which “market price” FT is based upon (I’m pretty sure it’s the C market), or when or how the new FT price is triggered. However, when coffee prices are rising, due to any number of factors including poor weather, the gap closes between the FT and market prices. Then there is less incentive for co-ops to become FT certified (which costs money), diluting FT’s power until prices fall again. Rising prices aside, the FT is not indexed to inflation or (falling) value of the US dollar. This is a challenging time for FT and farmers, and it will be interesting to see how this all unfolds.