Climate change / Coffee and the environment

Carbon credits with coffee: a how-to guide

Last spring I posted about a lecture I attended at the SCAA conference on coffee and climate change. I focused on the climate module that Rainforest Alliance is adding to its certification. Part of this initiative was to create a methodology for measuring and verifying carbon stored on coffee farms and a mechanism for producers to receive payments for carbon credits.

Rainforest Alliance partnered with the International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of the World Bank Group; ECOM Agroindustrial Corp., the world’s third largest coffee trading company; and coffee farmers in Mexico and Nicaragua to develop and test these methodologies. They produced a document, “Guidance on coffee carbon project development using the simplified agroforestry methodology.”

The guide is in six parts, and I’ll paraphrase the introduction to outline what each is about:

  1. A general overview of forest and agroforest carbon projects to help the reader understand what a ”project” is and what it is not; what is needed to set a project apart from business as usual practice; and why such projects are important and have value.
  2. Preparation and design of a project, requirements for a Project Design Document which identifies and explains each of the project’s key activities, elements, and important data.
  3. Description of risks to carbon projects’ success and how to assess and lower or manage them.
  4. Explains the processes of independent third party evaluation.
  5. An overview of the financial and contractual arrangements associated with carbon projects.
  6. Glossary and resources.

It’s a pretty straight-forward and non-technical document, and if you are interested I encourage you to download it and give it a look. One of my first thoughts was that this is still well out of the realm of many very small producers who might be only marginally literate. Like all certification schemes, we (the consuming “North”) are imposing a lot of rules and erecting a lot of barriers on farmers to in essence prove they are managing their land in an environmentally-responsible manner so that they might be rewarded for it. I don’t think the average Juan Valdez is going to sit down by the light of his wood-burning stove with this guide and be on his way to selling carbon credits. It will require support and partnership, which in turn requires funding, and ultimately boils down to the need for consumers to be willing to pay more for a sustainably-grown cup of coffee. Which I’ve been saying all along.

Photo by DelosJ under a Creative Commons License.

Certifications / Coffee news and miscellany

Shade-grown coffees at Coffee Review

For August 2009, Ken Davids’ Coffee Review takes a look at shade grown coffee. First he describes the definition of the term “shade grown” and goes on to provide reviews of 12 coffees that scored 89 or over. Three were Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffees, others were not certified, but grown under various levels of shade.

There were four coffees earning the highest mark of 92 points:

  • Counter Culture’s Finca Nueva Armenia (Guatemala). Certified organic and Bird-Friendly, this is one of my all-time favorite coffees. I reviewed last year’s crop, and this year it tastes even better. Ken describes a “slight hint of fruit ferment” that I find gives this year’s crop an extremely interesting, deep-toned, subtle wine-like complexity — it’s fantastic! I can be accused of giving a lot of love to Counter Culture, but I can assure you I recommend them and their coffees simply because they just do a bang-up job. Go buy this coffee!
  • Arbor Day Specialty Coffee Mexico ISMAM Co-op. Certified organic and Fair Trade. Coffee is traditionally grown under mixed shade in this region, and one or more of the many farms in this co-op (but not all) is or has been Bird-Friendly certified. I reviewed the Arbor Day Blend, which is sourced either from this co-op, or Nubes de Oro (which scored 91 points in this issue of Coffee Review). I wasn’t as enthused about either of these coffees as Ken, but suspect it was due to the crop I sampled being a little long in the tooth. I don’t see any way on their web site to order either of these Mexican coffees as a single origin, but you can go to the Arbor Day coffee web site and browse around.
  • Ecco Cafe Brazil Santa Terezinha. Organic. Santa Terezinha is indeed one of the only Brazilian farms that makes much use of shade; you can read more about the farming techniques at the blog of the importer, Sustainable Harvest. All the coffees I’ve had from Ecco Cafe have been excellent. I’ll be grabbing a bag of the Santa Terezinha with my next coffee order.
  • Flying Goat, Siberia, El Salvador. Certified organic, typically grown under shade in this region.  A classic, sweet Central from one of my favorite origin coffees.

There are other very nice sustainably-grown coffees in the list, many of which I’ve had and enjoyed. Go take a look at the reviews, the article, and while you’re there, the rest of Ken’s informative and authoritative site.

Retail and specialty roasters

Cafe Femenino now at Kroger

By now, Café Femenino coffee should be available in many Kroger grocery stores across the nation.

Café Femenino was founded in 2004 by Organic Products Trading Company (OPTCO, the exclusive importer of this coffee) and several other groups to organize and unite female producers in Peru. The project is now active in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic. Women are active in all aspects of coffee production, must be on the title of the land, receive extensive training and support and a premium above the established Fair Trade price.

Kroger will be carrying a Café Femenino coffee roasted by BuyWell Fair Trade Coffee: Peru Alta Gold, an organic dark roast produced by 743 women of the CECANOR cooperative in the Penachi region of Peru. (Click here for our review of several BuyWell coffees.) While at the SCAA conference last spring,I spoke with OPTCO’s founders Gay and Garth Smith. I asked which of their Café Femenino countries had the best and most diverse shade, and Peru was the answer.

At the same time, I also attended a screening of a documentary on Café Femenino, Strong Coffee. This was an extremely powerful film about an equally powerful life- and community-changing project.Café Femenino is one of the most worthwhile and transformative projects in coffee today. Kudos to Kroger for making it so widely and easily available.

Coffee news and miscellany

Specialty coffee on NPR

The Kojo Nnamdi show, out of WAMU in Washington, DC, had a segment on specialty coffee this week. Guests were Counter Culture’s Peter Giuliano (gratuitous photo of Peter and I at right; I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post this); Ric Rhinehart, Executive Director of the Specialty Coffee Association of America; Ryan Jensen, owner of Peregrine Espresso in DC; and Dale Roberts, owner of Java Shack in Arlington, VA.

Last month the Washington Post also had a terrific article about Counter Culture.

While I’m giving some love to great coffee and Counter Culture, the new crop of their Finca Nueva Armenia is in, and it is as fantastic, if not more so, than it was when we reviewed it last year. This is organic and also certified Smithsonian Bird-Friendly (although not marketed as such by Counter Culture) — it’s as good as super-sustainable coffee gets.