Coffee regions / Coffee reviews / Indo-Pacific

Review: Caffe Vita YUS (PNG)

When you think of endangered species, I’ll bet you don’t think about Matschie’s Tree Kangaroos. Tree kangaroos and coffee also make an unlikely pairing. But I’m here to tell you that Seattle-based Caffe Vita has brought them together. We’ll start with the ‘roo.

A kangaroo…

Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo (Dendrolagus matschiei) is one of about 10 species of tree kangaroo, most of which are found in Papua New Guinea. The Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo is only found on PNG’s Huon Peninsula, located in Morobe Province in the northeastern part of the island. Matschie’s Tree Kangaroos live in cloud forests, and look nothing like the upright, savannah-bounding Australian animals with which they share a name. These arboreal animals more resemble red pandas, although like more conventional kangaroos they do raise young in pouches and have impressive leaping abilities. They weigh about 10 kg and eat mostly leaves.

A conservation area…

In 1996, Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo started a tree kangaroo conservation program focusing on the Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo. From the start, they took a community-based approach to the preservation of the tree kangaroo habitat. A major accomplishment was the establishment of the 76,000 ha YUS Conservation Area — named for the three primary rivers in the Huon Peninsula: the Yopno, Uruwa and Som. In addition to Matschie’s Tree Kangaroos, this area, of course, preserves many other species including several incredible endemic birds-of-paradise: the Huon Astrapia (Astrapia rothschildi), Wahnes’s Parotia (Parotia wahnesi), and the Emperor Bird-of-paradise (Paradisaea guilielmi) — some of the most truly spectacular birds in the entire world.

In an arrangement similar to that of biosphere reserves, the  conservation area has a core protected area and buffer zones that allow for mixed, environmentally-friendly uses. One of these sustainable management strategies for local communities (there are nearly three dozen villages in the area) was coffee growing. Only about 6% of PNG’s coffee comes from Morobe Province. The YUS area is remote and very rugged, with no road access, and getting coffee to market is an enormous challenge. And it’s not like these farmers are in a place where the some equivalent of a local county extension agent can drop by and give some agricultural assistance. Thus, in 2010, the Zoo’s conservation program worked to provide technical training for over 300 YUS coffee farmers.

A coffee roaster…

Zoo program personnel knew a direct relationship with a stateside roaster would be a strong step in the right direction, so they approached Caffe Vita, a roaster with six locations in the Seattle area. In early 2011, Caffe Vita introduced a Zoo Special Reserve coffee to support the Woodland Park Zoo. Although currently sourced from Guatemala, it is organic and Rainforest Alliance certified, and $1 a bag goes to Zoo conservation efforts.

Green coffee samples from YUS farmers were brought to Caffe Vita to roast and evaluate. Green coffee buyer Daniel Shewmaker could tell there was potential. In the summer of 2011, encouraged by improvements to new samples he tasted, Shewmaker visited YUS. Abandoned coffee plots have been renewed and tended. He worked with farmers on improving drying methods and separating lots by elevation. He agreed to buy 22 bags. The coffee arrived in the U.S. in December, 2011, and in February, the coffee was made available to the public.

And the coffee

The YUS farmers are growing bourbon, typica, Mundo Novo, and Arusha varietals at 1200 to 1500 m.  While not certified organic, no chemicals are used; as you might imagine, if coffee is so difficult to get out of the area, any synthetic or commercially-produced inputs are just as hard to get in. The photo taken during a Caffe Vita visit shows the shade trees over the coffee shrubs.

Caffe Vita describes this coffee as “mellow and honey-like, with flavors of toasted hazelnut, orange zest, guava, and sugarcane.” We found the coffee to start out with a very slightly wild flavor, reminiscent of a Sumatran; one person described it as a spicy note. Brown sugar and caramel was mentioned several times from our panel, and nutty also came up more than once. One taster remarked upon enjoying a savory undertone as the coffee cooled. Nearly unanimous was the opinion that the YUS was very clean and smooth.  The panel gave it an average of 3.5 motmots, with many giving it 3.75.

PNG is one of my favorite origins, in part because I never know exactly what to expect. Those of us that drink PNG coffees fairly regularly were very impressed with this coffee, especially given its history. We didn’t find it extremely unique or mind-blowing, but it absolutely was as good as any other specialty PNG we had tasted in the past, and better than a hell of a lot of them. These farmers, in the short time they have had to work with Caffe Vita on upgrading and improving their growing and processing methods, came up with a perfectly clean coffee. We detected no baggy notes, a concern Shewmaker had given elevated moisture levels in earlier samples. A coffee this good so early in the game has no place to go but up, and I’m really looking forward to future crops. It’s available at Caffe Vita locations and online.

This coffee and conservation story is remarkable in many ways. In my line of work I see plenty of preservation efforts and cross-disciplinary partnerships. Many aren’t very long-lived or successful, and few are as encouraging, inclusive, and transparent as the work undertaken by the Woodland Park Zoo. Please take a look at the conservation program’s web site; in particular I encourage you to download some of their excellent, informative annual reports. Caffe Vita’s commitment to helping these efforts in so many meaningful ways is a model for what other coffee roasters can achieve by taking sustainability to heart. The only thing missing is you.

More info:

  • Short video about the coffee and project from the Woodland Park Zoo – 2.5 minutes and very cool.
  • Journey to a Papuan Paradise – great article from National Wildlife magazine about the Huon Peninsula, the tree kangaroo projects, and stunning photos of birds-of-paradise.
  • Capacity Building, Coffee, & Conservation Through the Woodland Park Zoo – National Geographic News Watch.

Matschie’s Tree Kangaroo photo by Tim Laman and map from the Woodland Park Zoo Tree Kangaroo Conservation Program media kit. Shade coffee photo by Caffe Vita on Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Research on coffee growing

The quest to grow caffeine-free coffee

The science journal Nature recently ran a great article outlining the problems in growing an ultra-low or caffeine-free variety of coffee, particularly one that would be commercially-viable. It goes over the pitfalls of various attempts at developing and cultivating a species or strain of Coffea that would produce naturally caffeine-free beans, including hybridization and genetic engineering.

Decades of study have clarified how Coffea plants synthesize caffeine, the alkaloid that provides a measure of pest control to the plants. But manipulating the genes in Coffea arabica has not resulted in plants that reliably produce caffeine-free beans.

There are over 100 species of Coffea, and quite a few produce little or no caffeine. I wrote about one caffeine-free species from the Cameroon, described in 2008. Genetic compatibility problems have proven a barrier in transferring the caffeine-free property from other species to Coffea arabica. Wild, low-caffeine species of coffee have other bitter alkaloids that stand in for caffeine as pest protection, so cross-breeding with arabica has resulted in low cup quality. Individual plants of Coffea arabica that produce little or no caffeine have also been found, and arabica seeds have even been soaked in chemicals to induce mutations. Still, cross-breeding, cloning, and other techniques have so far failed to produce coffee with enough of the right stuff and less of the wrong stuff.

The article is open access, and I’ve included a list of related scientific literature below for more information.

Campa, C., Doulbeau, S., Dussert, S., Hamon, S., and Noirot, M. 2005. Diversity in bean caffeine content among wild Coffea species: evidence of a discontinuous distribution. Food Chemistry 91:633—637.

Mazzafera, P., Baumann, T. W., Shimizu, M. M., and Silvarolla, M. B. 2009. Decaf and the steeplechase towards decaffito—the coffee from caffeine-free arabica plants. Tropical Plant Biology 2:63-76.

Nagai, C., Rakotomalala, J. J., and Katahira, R. 2008. Production of a new low-caffeine hybrid coffee and the biochemical mechanism of low caffeine accumulation. Euphytica 164:133—142.

Ogita, S., Uefuji, H., Yamaguchi, Y., Koizumi, N. and Sano, H. 2003. RNA interference: Producing decaffeinated coffee plants. Nature 423: 823.

Silvarolla, M. B., Mazzafera, P. and Fazuoli, L. C. 2004. Plant biochemistry:  A naturally decaffeinated arabica coffee. Nature 429:826.

Photo by Chris Brown (zoonabar) under a Creative Commons license.

Corporate coffee / Smucker's

Let’s try this again

Shareholders will again propose that Smucker’s develop a coffee sustainability plan

JM Smucker Co., owner of coffee brands including Folgers, Millstone, Kava, and Café Bustelo, is the fourth largest buyer of coffee in the world. In 2010, they purchased over 250,000 tons of coffee, and only a fraction of a percent was certified in any way. A recent analysis by the Tropical Commodity Coalition notes that the company “does not provide verifiable procurement figures of certified coffees, has no specific goals for a more sustainable coffee sector, and its future commitment is extremely vague.”

Readers will recall that last year two major investors, Trillium Asset Management and Calvert Investments, put forth a shareholder proposal requesting that Smucker’s prepare a sustainability report.  The Smucker’s Board unanimously recommended that shareholders vote against this proposal. Nonetheless, at the August 2011 meeting,  roughly 20% of shareholders voted in favor of the proposal, with another 10% abstaining, for about a third not agreeing with the board*. (You can read the whole story with background here.)

This year, a similar shareholder proposal will be presented. The resolution, filed recently by Trillium Asset Management, requests that Smucker’s, within six months of the annual meeting, develops and publishes a coffee sustainability plan that goes beyond the insipid 2011 “plan.” This proposal will specifically ask that the plan include:

(1) quantitative goals for quantities of certified coffee purchases; (2) a method for evaluating the success of the plan in addressing the challenges of climate change to the Company and the farmers and ecosystems in its coffee supply chain.

American consumers continue to reward Smucker’s. The U.S. retail coffee segment contributed 49% of the total profit for the company in the quarter ending in January 2012; this segment reported a profit margin of 21.7%.

From their nostalgic ads featuring a bygone era, to their honoring of centenarians via Willard Scott, to their antediluvian view of sustainability and transparency, Smucker’s is stuck in the past. Hopefully this proposal will meet with some success at the annual meeting this summer and move Smucker’s into the present day.

*Another interesting proposal has been filed by a different group, asking that Smucker’s follow the Security and Exchange Commissions standard for proxy vote counting. Currently, Smucker’s counts all abstaining votes as votes in favor of management. Abstentions, where shareholders want their vote noted but not counted, are not figured into the SEC  formula. Counting these as in favor of the management seems to clearly be against the wishes of the abstaining voters.

Coffee regions / Research on coffee growing

Research: Puerto Rican shade coffee and biodiversity

Shade-grown coffee in Puerto Rico: Opportunities to preserve biodiversity while reinvigorating a struggling agricultural commodity. Borkhataria, Collazo, Groom, and Jordan-Garcia. 2012. Agriculture, Ecosystems, and Environment.

Even though coffee was first planted in Puerto Rico in 1736, we don’t hear much about it. In part, this is because much of the coffee grown there is consumed there. Still, coffee was PR’s major crop in the early 1800s, but hurricanes, high labor costs, low yields and other problems diminished its importance. Government support has been largely responsible for its persistence, and this included recommendations to increase yield by converting to sun coffee in the late 1980s, with any “shade” farms directed to use widely spaced trees and total shade not exceeding 30%. According to agricultural statistics summarized in the first paper noted above, there were 15,144 ha of coffee in PR in 2007 on over 5,600 farms which averaged 20 ha.  Over 69% of this land was characterized as sun coffee.

Authors also surveyed a random sample of 100 coffee farmers (nearly all of which answered the questions regarding shade). A third of the farmers considered their coffee shade coffee, and another 21% said they had both shade and sun coffee. However, when evaluated by the surveyors, the actual number of farms that could be considered traditional or polyculture shade was only 8%. This points out the clear problem of a lack of an agreed-upon definition of “shade”!

Most PR coffee farmers receive some sort of governmental assistance, often in the form of fertilizers. One farmer interviewed said he preferred to grow under shade, but grew a few hectares of coffee in sun in order to have access to incentives. About 70% of the farmers said they’d be willing to plant shade trees if they were encouraged by the government and if shade trees were provided to them.

The authors recommended government practices which would help promote production that protected biodiversity, took advantage of markets that favored sustainable agriculture, and made incentives were more available to farmers wishing to grow shade coffee.

Borkhataria, R., Collazo, J., Groom, M., & Jordan-Garcia, A. (2012). Shade-grown coffee in Puerto Rico: Opportunities to preserve biodiversity while reinvigorating a struggling agricultural commodity Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 149, 164-170 DOI: 10.1016/j.agee.2010.12.023