Research on coffee growing

Coffee-related deforestation in Sumatra

Three decades of deforestation in southwest Sumatra: effects of coffee prices, law enforcement and rural poverty. 2009. D. L. A. Gaveau, M. Linkie, Suyadi, P. Levang, and N. Leader-Williams. Biological Conservation 142:597-605 .

I’ve written in the past about Sumatra’s problems with illegal coffee growing, particularly in Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park. A 2007 World Wildlife Fund investigation revealed that the robusta coffee grown illegally in the park was threatening the integrity of tiger, elephant, and rhino habitat and was purchased by such large companies as Kraft and Nestlé. A year later, I posted an update that noted Nestlé was still buying coffee originating in the park.

This study revisited this on-going situation, examining how deforestation can be curbed by law enforcement efforts, and how deforestation rates are driven by coffee prices.

Over the last 34 years, the main driver of deforestation in and around the park has been production of low-grade robusta coffee, the kind used in cheap grocery store blends and instant brands. In 2005, more than 85% of the forested areas in the park that had been converted to agriculture was planted with coffee, and the yield was a remarkable 4% of Indonesia’s entire annual robusta production.

The was a complex interplay of changing laws, local coffee prices tied to currency valuation, and low wages in the coffee-growing regions that drove the coffee-related deforestation, nicely analyzed by the authors. Active law enforcement did curtail the encroachment in the park in the 1980s. It has rebounded since the late 1990s; the departure of President Suharto has seen a decline in the emphasis on law enforcement, and a change in the governing philosophy towards conservation and rural workers, explain the authors.

The authors did not give a lot of cause for optimism that the coffee-related deforestation can be easily addressed. For example, eco-certification has been suggested to help provide premiums to farmers that grow coffee outside of the park under sustainable guidelines. But according to the authors, buyers and roasters are unwilling to manage the costs of certification. I doubt that the premiums wouldn’t be sufficient to discourage farming inside park boundaries (consumers would be unwilling to absorb additional costs for low-quality robusta).

Ultimately the authors suggested that prohibiting local use of the park would have to be reconsidered, including, perhaps, some type of sustainable-use policy and community conservation projects.

Photo of a Sumatran Tiger by g-na under a Creative Commons license.

Certifications / Organic coffee

Organic certifiers incorporating shade criteria

At least two organizations providing coffee certification services have incorporated shade criteria into their organic certification standards. Here is a bit about them, and some pros and cons.

Although requirements for organic labeling are usually established by national governments, independent agencies are licensed to provide inspection and certification services to producers. Two such organizations are OCIA International and Certimex (which operates only in Mexico). Both of these certifiers have personnel who are also trained in shade certification, because they are authorized by Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center to perform inspection for their Bird-Friendly certification. (Rainforest Alliance uses Sustainable Farm Certification, Intl., their own subsidiary).

Certimex

Certimex is using shade criteria as a requirement for organic certification.Great idea, except that the criteria is vague and undefined (“should grow under diversified shade” [1]). There is nothing wrong per se about adding in this type of wording, and anything that encourages some sort of shade preservation or restoration is a positive move. However,it offers no concrete assurance that compliance (which isn’t measurable) really does anything to preserve shade or biodiversity. We’ll have to see were Certimex goes with this.

OCIA

OCIA offers a separate certification for organic/shade coffee. The standards are more specific and provide quantifiable benchmarks that are similar to, but not as broad, as Smithsonian Bird-Friendly and Rainforest Alliance. They were, in fact, developed in cooperation with Smithsonian. I was able to obtain the 2008 OCIA International Certification Standards. Here are the ones specific to shade:

  • Rustic or traditional polyculture encouraged.
  • 40% canopy cover required.
  • Not more than 20% of shade trees can be non-native species.
  • Not more than 50% of the canopy can be made up of Inga species.
  • Shade must comprise at least ten tree species that are not Inga, Erythrina, Gliricidia sepium, or Grevillea robusta [Erythrina and Gliricidia are deciduous; they lose
    their leaves during the dry season (our winter), at a time when canopy
    cover is extremely important for both migrant and resident birds.  Grevillea robusta is not native to Latin America].
  • A single species of Inga cannot comprise greater than 50% of the trees in the production are.

These criteria, along with others for vegetation management and the organic criteria themselves, are quantifiable habitat-targeted criteria, not the sort of general or intangible environmental standards used by Fair Trade or Utz Certified.

The future of combined environmental criteria

Integrating shade criteria into existing organic criteria to create an “organic +” category is something that has been discussed for quite some time as an option to help achieve some sort of “environmental seal” for coffee [2,3]. In that sense, the OCIA standards are a positive move.

On the other hand, unless there is coordination among organic certifiers to use uniform (and scientifically sound/biologically relevant) standards, this runs the risk of just adding another label to a bag of coffee, creating consumer confusion, fatigue, or even distrust. In this case, so far as I know, OCIA is not actually adding another label or designation to the coffee. This is problematic to me. A roaster could legitimately market this coffee as shade-grown, but a consumer would have little or no clue as to what standards are being met, since there is no designation or explanation on the OCIA web site.

Ultimately, an “eco-friendly” type of seal that incorporates organic and shade standards will also somehow have to be regionally sensitive. In some regions of Latin America, coffee is grown at high altitudes where clouds provide shade and additional tree cover would be counter-productive, or is grown in areas (like the Brazilian cerrado) that wasn’t forested to begin with. Standards for preservation of native habitat in these areas would be more appropriate. Even in forested areas, different parts of the world will require different shade criteria.

[1] Dietsch, T., and S. M.. Philpott. 2008. Linking consumers to sustainability: incorporating science into eco-friendly certification. Globalizations 5:247-258.

[2] Commission for Environmental Cooperation and TerraChoice Environmental Services. 2004. Environmental and other labeling of coffee, the role of mutual recognition, supporting cooperative action. Sustainable Commodity Initiative, International Institute for Sustainable Development and United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

[3] Rice, P. and J. McLean. 1999. Sustainable Coffee at the Crossroads. Consumer’s Choice Council.

Birds and other biodiversity / Know Your Coffee Birds series

Know your coffee birds: Emerald Toucanet

The Emerald Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus) is the most widely distributed member of the toucan family. It can be found from Mexico through Central America south to Bolivia. As might be expected for a species with such as broad geographic range, there are many subspecies — at least 17. They vary by throat color, facial pattern, and the color and pattern of the bill. Some researchers believe that some of these may actually be separate species, with perhaps four different species in Central America, and at least three in South America.

Emerald Toucanets are, as the name implies, smaller than toucans, at a little over a foot long. The sexes look alike, although males have slightly larger bills than females. Nobody is positive why this difference exists, as one study discovered it is not related to differences in diet or foraging (which is often the case when both sexes share territories year round). These toucanets nest in well-concealed tree hollows, and live in small flocks in the non-breeding season. They are found in open woodlands, including shade coffee plantations, from around 900 to over 3000 meters.

While they eat big insects and small lizards, fruit forms a large part of the diet of Emerald Toucanets. Therefore they are important dispersers of the seeds of tropical trees and shrubs. They have large feeding territories, so they encounter many species of trees, up to 47 at one Costa Rican study site alone. Although they are the smallest members of the toucan family, they’ll even consume large-seeded fruits, repeatedly regurgitating and reswallowing a fruit until the seed separates from the pulp and can be discarded. For the most part, seeds pass through the digestive system, though, and it’s been determined that those have a higher germination rate than seeds that merely drop to the ground in the fruit. All these factors make Emerald Toucanets an integral part of tropical forest ecosystems.

Because this species favors open forest habitats and forages in the mid-canopy, shade coffee farms are suitable habitat for them — and likely quite important in regions where other deforestation is high. Counter Culture Coffee chose the Emerald Toucanet for the new label of its Cafe San Ramon coffee because it is found at one of the main suppliers of these beans: Finca Esperanza Verde in the Matagalpa region of Nicaragua. In fact, when Counter Culture was redesigning the label and asked for a recommendation, I suggested this species (and the subspecies on the label is the correct one!). Just to keep myself honest, I’ll will be at Finca Esperanza Verde this week doing some bird surveys and bird banding, and hope to see a few Emerald Toucanets in the process.

Credits and references

Top photo of a “Blue-throated” Emerald Toucanet in Costa Rica by Laura Erickson; used with permission. Middle photo of the nominate form of Emerald Toucanet, in Honduras, by Brian Gratwicke, under a Creative Commons license.

Puebla-Olivares, F., E. Bonaccorso, A. E. de los Monteros, K. E. Omland, J. E. Llorente-Bousquets, A. T. Peterson, and A. G.
Navarro-Siguenza. 2008. Speciation in the Emerald Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus) complex. Auk 125:39-50.  For an excellent discussion of this paper and the taxonomy of Emerald Toucanets, see Nick Sly’s blog posts on the topic.

Riley, C. M. and K. G. Smith. 1992. Sexual dimorphism and foraging behavior of Emerald Toucanets Aulacorhynchus prasinus in Costa Rica. Ornis Scandinavica 23:459-466.

Wenny, D. May 2000. Seed dispersal, seed predation, and seedling recruitment of a newtropical montane tree. Ecological Monographs / Ecological Society of America, 70 (2): 331-351.

Wheelwright, N. T. 1991. How long do fruit-eating birds stay in the plants where they feed? Biotropica 23:29-40.

Wagner, H. O. 1944. Notes on the life history of the Emerald Toucanet. Wilson Bulletin 56:65-76.

Coffee reviews / Latin America / Retail and specialty roasters / Starbucks

Coffee review: Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #41.

Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexicois produced by around 900 small farmers on 3200 ha of land in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas [1]. Many of the farms are near or adjacent to the El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, which contains the northernmost cloud forests in the world and is considered as one of the greatest biodiversity sites of North America. El Triunfo totals 119,000 ha, of which 93,458 ha corresponds to a buffer zone and the rest to the core areas. Core areas are primary forest owned by the government. The buffer zone consists of privately owned lands, about 60% of which are forested. The remainder is agricultural, with shade coffee being the dominant crop; up to 70% is rustic shade.

Originally this coffee was to be a temporary offering, but proved so popular that it is on the permanent Starbucks menu.

Background

This coffee-sourcing is part of a partnership with Conservation International (CI) which began in 1998. Originally, this was to be a three-year program with CI providing technical assistance to producers encouraging them to continue eco-friendly growing practices, and Starbucks as a dependable buyer. This partnership has continued with some new wrinkles, including the development of Starbucks C.A.F.E. practices.

This project has not been without controversy. One main gripe has been that the contracts with Starbucks paid above-market prices, but the beans went through the large exporter and processor Agroindustrias de Mexico (AMSA), which took a cut of the price. This doesn’t seem like an unusual arrangement and perhaps the only practical one with between a large buyer and dozens of cooperatives. At some point Starbucks did try to deal directly with producers, but the cooperatives were unable to arrange shipment.

Some of the co-ops withdrew from participation. Various reasons have been given. According to CI’s report to USAID [1], when the world price of coffee rose above the price already agreed to in the contracts, producers reneged and sold to other buyers (a not too-uncommon occurrence). Some felt that, after a long struggle for autonomy, that they were once again beholden to middlemen [2]. CI apparently negotiated many of the initial contracts, and some producers later regretted signing when they found out Starbucks was the end buyer (was that not in the contracts?). There were also objections to quality demands being imposed on them.

Nonetheless, the arrangement with Starbucks did and has increased income for many of the farmers. One co-op mentioned as a participant in a New York Times article was identified by a Fair Trade advocate as being organizationally weak, not well suited to judging the quality of their own beans, and unable to seek out other buyers. If that’s the case, this co-op may not be qualified for Fair Trade certification, and therefore Starbucks might be the best option for them, at least at this time.

While there is a lack of publicly available objective information on the outcomes of the Chiapas coffee project, from what I have read it has had an overall positive net impact. Encouraging and promoting organic and shade-grown coffee is a major goal of El Triunfo conservation efforts. At least for some period of time, cooperatives that withdrew from the CI/Starbucks program had a hard time finding buyers, especially those that would pay high prices and invest in their communities. If Starbucks is purchasing an average of 1.7 million pounds of coffee from this area every year, this is likely a good thing, especially if these producers do not have other options for selling their beans.

Finally, we need to bear in mind that this is a certified organic coffee, but it does not have shade certification by Smithsonian or Rainforest Alliance. As mentioned above, however, the coffee grown in this area, especially in the El Triunfo buffer zone, is traditionally grown in the shade, often diverse shade.

Let’s move on to the coffee
Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico is billed as a medium roast. For a company known to over-do the roasting, I was surprised to see that “medium” was actually “medium.” I think good Mexican coffees are delicate and sweet and should be roasted light, but I suppose medium was a good compromise to cater to the tastes of Starbucks customers. I was also surprised to see that in a French press, this coffee was fresh enough to have a decent bloom.

This coffee was what we expected from a Mexican coffee: pleasant, approachable, smooth, and well-balanced. It was fairly sweet with hints of chocolate; a couple people thought that rather than milk chocolate it was a more bittersweet dark chocolate, perhaps due to the roast. One person tasted cinnamon. Overall, comments were quite positive. A few people with known anti-Starbucks sentiments were grudgingly impressed. This is a decent coffee that most people should find more than acceptable. When the votes were tallied, it came away with a solid 3 motmots.

Because of its size, Starbucks falls victim to its own success. Providing a consistent product at such large volumes inevitably means lower quality, buying through exporters (and thus lower prices for producers) and an inability to truly police the growing methods of thousands of farmers. Still, I can think of few other offerings by any of the big roasters that are as positive for the environment as the Starbucks Organic Shade Grown Mexico. It sure beats Kraft’s 30% Rainforest Alliance certified (and 70% mystery-sourced) Yuban, and tastes better to boot.

[1] Conservation International and Starbucks Coffee Company. 2007. The Conservation Coffee Alliance.  USAID Contract # 596-A-00-04-00039-00, Annual and Final Report 2004-2007.

[2] Gonzalez, A. A. and R. Nigh. 2004. Smallholder participation and certification of organic farm products in Mexico. Journal of Rural Studies 21:449-460.