Background information / Fair and Direct Trade

Fair Trade environmental standards

It’s hard to blame consumers for being confused by the number of eco-labels on products these days. “Fair Trade” certified coffee is probably the most familiar to many consumers. Fair Trade (generically and as trademarked by various organizations) is primarily concerned with alleviating poverty through greater equity in international trade. Fair Trade is governed in most of the world by the Fairtrade International (FLO).  In the U.S., Fairtrade America is their member organization. The former member, Fair Trade USA, which resigned from the international system in early 2012 and is now a separate entity.

Many people assume, however, that Fairtrade/Fair Trade certification standards also include robust environmental standards. This assumption is promoted by some organizations themselves.

For example, At one time, the Fair Trade USA environmental benefits web page has stated that “over 80% of the Fair Trade certified coffee in the U.S. is also shade-grown.” Currently, the site says “most” is shade-grown. According to the most recent (2006) statistics I could find, only about 40% of the Fair Trade coffee imported into the U.S.  is also certified by Rainforest Alliance and/or Smithsonian Bird-Friendly [1].  More recently, Fairtrade International’s benefits report (found on their Facts and Figures page), notes 51% of Fairtrade certified producers (of ANY product, not just coffee) also hold organic certification, and 10% have Rainforest Alliance certification. Since neither of those certifications guarantees shade themselves, I am not sure if either organization can claim that the majority of their certified coffee is also shade-grown.

In fact, Fair Trade certification has no criteria related to growing coffee under shade, it does not require organic certification, it contains no guidelines for management of native or non-native species, it does not require any inventory of wildlife or prohibit hunting or trafficking in animals. These are all included in the criteria for shade certification by Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (Bird-Friendly) and/or Rainforest Alliance.

Let’s take a look at the Fairtrade/Fair Trade environmental standards.

Fairtrade International is the association of producer networks and national labeling initiatives, including Fairtrade America, that develops and reviews the Fairtrade standards. There are two sets of standards: overarching generic standards, and standards specific to each type of product. Let’s look at the standards which specifically address preserving and protecting the environment.

Here is a summary of the generic producer standards for small producers (which apply to coffee farmers) that address preserving and protecting the environment:

  • No plant material can be collected from protected areas or propagated illegally.
  • Harvesting of wild products from natural areas must be done sustainably and human impact minimized.
  • Co-ops should have environmental and land use plans and maintain records pertaining to land, water, and chemical use.
  • Co-ops must recognize conservation and buffer areas and not cultivate within them or apply agrochemicals.
  • Virgin forest can’t be cultivated, unless an exception is granted.
  • In areas of low biodiversity or similar degraded areas, co-op members should plant trees or “encourage” regeneration of native flora.
  • Co-ops should promote farm diversity, including reforestation or shade implementation, “as is practical” and “progress should be made over time.”
  • No use of chemicals on a prohibited list.
  • Agrochemicals must be labeled, stored, and used as directed.
  • Use of permitted herbicides must be justified.
  • Producers are expected to seek less toxic alternatives to and try to reduce volumes of agrochemicals to the extent possible.
  • Waste should be reduced, reused, recycled and composted in an appropriate manner.
  • Soil erosion should be managed, soil fertility should be maintained.
  • Water should be managed efficiently and to avoid contamination and depletion of resources.
  • Genetically modified organisms are prohibited.

These are indeed pretty generic. There are few specific criteria and virtually no quantifiable or measurable rules. I expected the product standard for coffee to have more precise restrictions or environmental standards relating to birds and wildlife. Here’s what the 2009 document said:

“There are no additional environmental standards specific to coffee producers.”

Fairtrade International standards can be downloaded from this page.

Fair Trade USA environmental standards are substantially similar and there are no separate documents or guidelines for coffee. Their standards can be downloaded from this page.

There are plenty of worthwhile things about these certifications. The environmental guidelines, however general, are better than none at all and in many cases undoubtedly result in better environmental conditions. I strongly believe that reducing poverty also helps prevent environmental exploitation, and Fair Trade has improved the lives of thousands of farmers. Because Fair Trade coffee is grown by small producers, it is often grown in a sustainable manner.

But just to clarify: Fairtrade/Fair Trade certification alone does not automatically mean or guarantee that rigorous environmental standards were followed, or that the coffee was grown under shade. For that you’ll have to look for an additional seal or seals, or have detailed information about the specific origin to assess growing conditions.

[1] 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. Available online (PDF).

Retail and specialty roasters

Trader Joe’s coffee

Trader Joe’s is a specialty grocery store chain with 315 stores nationwide. It was founded by Joe Coulombe in California, with the first store under the Trader Joe’s name opening in 1966. In 1979, the company was purchased by Theo Albrecht, a German billionaire and one of the brothers that founded the ALDI discount supermarket chain; it remains a privately held company in an Albrecht family trust. Although ALDI and TJ’s have always operated as separate entities, many of TJ/’s business practices are right out of the ALDI playbook.

Private labels = low cost = murky transparency

Like ALDI, TJ’s is known for it’s wide range of reasonably priced, private label house brands. Private label brands are manufactured by one company, which remains anonymous, to be sold under the brand of another. Like ALDI, TJ’s is especially secretive about their suppliers [1]. (Update: read more in the Fortune magazine article, “Inside the secret world of Trader Joe’s” from August 2010.)

TJ’s offers over a dozen house brands of coffee. The varieties may provide a country or countries of origin, but other details on the source of the coffee are usually not on the packaging. I wrote two detailed emails and a snail mail letter to TJ’s inquiring about their coffee sourcing and inviting them to highlight their sustainability efforts. I did not get any replies. I’m not alone; TJ’s did not respond to phone inquiries from a reporter seeking comment on their lack of shade coffee criteria.

Who roasts Trader Joe’s coffee?

Nonetheless, some digging indicates that Mountanos Brothers in California has been sourcing and roasting coffee for TJ’s for some time. Mountanos has a wholesale green coffee importing division as well as a retail and roasting arm, which also handles wholesale and private label business.You’ll recognize the familiar fiberboard valve canisters used by both Mountanos and TJ’s.

Trader Joe’s shade grown coffee

Right now in my local store, TJ’s has three varieties labeled as “shade grown” which I’ll explore further:

  • Organic, Fair Trade, Shade Grown Ethiopian Yirgacheffe
  • Organic, Fair Trade, Shade Grown Café Femenino
  • Shade Grown Deep French Roast (blend of Central and South American)

These display organic and/or Fair Trade certification seals, but no shade certification. Remember, there’s no legal definition of “shade.” Roasters have various ways of “verifying” that coffee is shade grown, and it’s usually the word of non-biologists with an interest in getting the coffee sold.

What do we know about the origins of Trader Joe’s coffees that are labeled shade grown?

Ethiopia
Typically, Ethiopian coffee is grown by small holders in garden plots under light shade. The garden plots consist of multicropping of plants such as ginger and cardamom, fruit trees (avocado, papaya), and coffee shrubs planted in the shade of one or a few trees. While there are large government and private plantations, they usually do not qualify for Fair Trade certification and are generally not organic. I surmise that the source of TJ’s Ethiopian coffee (at least a large part of it) is the Oromia Coffee Farmers Cooperative Union (OCFCU), which represents nearly 103,000 producers in 29 cooperatives, about 20% of which are Fair Trade certified. With that many producers, it’s hard to say how many have really biodiverse coffee plots, and there is virtually nothing focusing on the environment on the Oromia web site. But the Oromia project is considered very worthwhile to the members, and if nothing else I believe thwarting poverty also averts environmental exploitation. A cautious thumbs up, if TJ’s is sourcing from Oromia.

Café Femenino
As of this writing, TJ’s Café Femenino coffee comes from Peru (the Café Femenino project is other countries but the basic social principals apply) . This coffee does have a more specific origin noted: northern Peru’s Lambayeque region. These would be the beans from female producers separated from those of the local co-op, CECANOR. Other than the usual mention that the coffee is shade grown, there are few details on environmental initiatives on the CECANOR web site or the web site of Café Femenino’s exclusive importer, Optco.  From what I have read about the Café Femenino project, most of these female producers have very small plots, and many do grow under levels of shade that are more diverse than much of the coffee produced in Peru (see below). It is also a worthwhile project to support. Of the three coffees, this is the one I would say is most sustainable on an environmental and human scale.

Shade Grown Deep French Roast
So what about the coffee that Trader Joe’s highlights in their coffee brochure as their signature shade grown brand, the Shade Grown Deep French Roast?

The eye-popping Paradise Tanager is a species that has been found in Peruvian shade coffee farms, but not in nearby sun coffee.

All we have to go by is that it is a blend of Central and South American beans. It’s highly probable that the South American component comes from Peru, as Colombia and Brazil are not known for either their organic or shade coffee. Peru is one of the world’s largest producers of organic coffee, but their focus on volume has resulted in deforestation in many areas, and it’s likely to be grown under monoculture shade [2]. You have no assurance that just because the coffee is organic, that it is grown under any kind of diverse shade that preserves habitat.

As for a more specific origin in Peru, it’s not Café Femenino, which must be not be blended and must be labeled as such. It may be sourced from other members of the CECANOR co-op, and I’ve also heard that TJ’s sources from COCLA, a huge umbrella organization of 8000 producers.

The problem with determining the sustainability of coffee from cooperatives, especially large ones, is that they comprise a wide range of farming practices, since each farmer manages his own farm independently. Beans in any given shipment of coffee might come from many dozens or hundreds of farms. The majority of the farms in an organic certified co-op may not even be inspected annually.

As for the Central American component, it’s anybody’s guess. A likely source is some of the tons of generic beans coming out of Guatemala, and if they consider Mexico part of Central America, some could also come from there.

Why won’t they be more specific?

Aside from protecting the identity of their suppliers, large volume coffee roasters/distributors use broad geographic descriptors on their packaging to ensure that they have the flexibility to source from a large number of co-ops or farms. If a coffee is labeled “Mexico,” for example, a roaster can source from well over 100,000 producers Imagine the leeway Trader Joe’s has by indicating the source for their Shade Grown Dark French Roast is essentially all of Latin America!

In these instances, Trader Joe’s, and other large roasters, are looking for the best price. By having the option of using so many producers, they also are able to drive down prices by increasing competition between producers. As for quality, these large roasters are aiming for a particular flavor profile — necessarily a rather generic one — and often use darker roasts to cover up flaws in lower-quality beans [3]. While dark roasts are a nod to the public that seems enamored with over-roasted coffee and mistakenly equates “dark” with “strong,” turning a bean black blasts any honest character out of coffee. You are left with coffee that lacks distinction and could be from anywhere. And probably is.

Conclusion

Buying coffee from Trader Joe’s is better than buying Folger’s, Maxwell House, or some other mass-produced brand. But their focus on low price is a double-edged sword, opening a market for farmers who are unable to achieve real quality, but also depressing prices and lowering expectations. And I disagree with the whole concept of anonymous food products. I don’t like to dump on Trader Joe’s. There are a lot of things I like about it. Coffee just isn’t one of them.

The bottom line is that Trader Joe’s shade grown coffees are not third-party verified, and TJ’s offers no explanation as to how they’ve concluded that the coffees they offer are indeed eco-friendly. And because Trader Joe’s does not provide enough information on the origins of most of their coffees, it’s not possible to determine if they are actually grown in a sustainable manner.

Notes:

[1] When it comes to consumable products, this anonymity can be problematic. It can be dangerous, as the current peanut product recall illustrates — at least 10 Trader Joe’s products are part of the recall. Or it may just confuse the consumer, as is the case with organic milk. An increasing volume of organic milk is coming from industrial dairies that are not in full compliance with organic standards. This milk shows up in name brands (Horizon Organic is the brand owned by agribusiness giant Dean’s Foods) and private labels. A comprehensive look at this situation is provided by the Cornucopia Institute, which just came out with an update to its dairy report; the scorecard rates Trader Joe’s private label milk 1 out of 5, stating that TJ’s, like other private label marketers, was unwilling to divulge where they got their milk.

[2] For example, Cerulean Warblers were found in rustic coffee farms in central Peru during a Smithsonian survey in 1998-1999. Follow up surveys in 2006 found this habitat had been eliminated. The coffee was still there, but the diverse native shade trees had been cleared and replaced with young fast-growing species with few leaves and epiphytes; no Cerulean Warblers were found. More commentary on the lack of eco-friendliness of Peru’s organic coffee can be found on Gunnar Engblom’s Birding Peru web site. Gunnar is a transplanted Swedish biologist who is a conservationist and experienced bird guide, operating Kolibri Expeditions out of Lima, Peru.

Engblom, G. 2006. Cerulean Warbler survey in Central Peru January-February 2006. Report to el Grupo Ceruleo, subcommittee of the Cerulean Warbler Working Group, U.S. Forest Service, Southern Research Station.

Sterling, J., R. Greenberg, W. Widdowson, M. Widdowson, and P Bichier. 1998. Birds of the Villa Rica area, Pasco, Peru. Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. PDF.

[3] Ken Davids at Coffee Review has a brief discussion on TJ’s over-dark roasts and the problems with bargain-priced Fair Trade coffees.

Paradise Tanager photo by Alan Wolf under a Creative Commons license. Cup photo by Majiscup under a Creative Commons license.

Background information / Corporate coffee

When birders* drink Folger’s

An editorial recently appeared in the scientific journal Conservation Biology. It was titled “When swordfish conservation biologists eat swordfish.” As the title implies, it’s a riff on the hypocrisy of avowed conservationists when their own lifestyles are inconsistent with the messages they voice. It struck a big chord with me, so I am going to borrow on its theme and major points.

One of my biggest frustrations is the resistance among many birders to change their coffee buying habits. Most birders I’ve talked to are aware that shade grown coffee preserves habitat and is very important to birds, and that mass produced coffee and grocery store brands are bad for the environment. But the next thing I often hear is some excuse why they still drink unsustainable coffee: they can’t find shade coffee, it’s too expensive, they don’t understand or trust certifications, they don’t like the shade/organic coffee they’ve tried, or…no excuse at all. Just a shrug and an admission of guilt.

Not only is it time for us — birders — to acknowledge that our consumption is often in conflict with our professed beliefs and passions, it’s time to do something about it.

In an ideal world, corporate conscience or government regulations would see to it that our environment is protected and that habitats are not destroyed needlessly. But in reality corporations and elected officials both respond to the values and actions of public consensus.

For coffee, certifications (such as Fair Trade, organic, or Bird-Friendly) help fill a regulatory vacuum. But since they are voluntary and not legally required, they are market-driven. Market forces will favor the standards that are easiest to meet. Participation by producers and distributors is reliant upon them gaining higher prices, better market access, or positive social benefits. Lack of consumer demand for the certified coffees undermines all of these motivations.

Chestnut-sided Warblers used to winter here, once upon a time.

Lack of demand has also contributed to the scarcity of certified coffees in the market. Consumers need to grow this market segment. Seeking out sources of sustainably-grown coffee, even if it lacks a certification seal, sends a message to producers. But it means doing a lot of homework. So no matter how you look at it, it is our responsibility to become informed, and we are left to make hard choices regarding our coffee buying habits ourselves.

Of all people, aren’t we as birders the ones who should be setting the example for others? Certainly we are far more informed about the habits, natural history, and declines in many migratory birds than the general public. If we can’t translate our love for birds into action in our daily lives, who are we to criticize the “drill, baby, drill” mentality of others?

To not make the effort to drink coffee that sustains the habitats not only of the creatures that bring us joy, but also of an enormous chunk of the biodiversity that sustains our planet, is not being a particularly responsible world citizen. It also indicates a belief that the actions of individuals do not matter.

The ConBio editorial ended with a quote from Mahatma Gandhi that I will repeat here:

“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”

I want to see a world filled with birds and tropical biodiversity. I want to support that, even with the small but powerful gesture of the coffee I choose to drink.

(A follow-up to this post is here.)

~*~

*You may substitute “nature lovers”, “conservationists”, “environmentalists”, or other green type and still get the picture.

Photo of Doka Coffee Estate in Costa Rica by Josh Yellin via Flickr under a Creative Commons license.

Bearzi, G. 2009. When swordfish conservation biologists eat swordfish. Conservation Biology 23:1-2.

Retail and specialty roasters / Smithsonian Bird-Friendly

Birds&Beans: a new Bird-Friendly coffee initiative

A new initiative to featuring Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee is being launched next week in the New England and New York area. “Birds&Beans: the good coffee” will be sold by subscription, and promoted via “Voices for the Birds” talks by several leading names in bird conservation.

The coffees, all Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified (and therefore also certified organic) will be available in three varieties:

  • Scarlet Tanager will be the dark/bold roast from Peru, and will also be Fair Trade certified.
  • Chestnut-sided Warbler will be a medium roast Colombian (also Rainforest Alliance certified).
  • Wood Thrush will be the light/mild roast Mexican, also be Fair Trade certified.

The coffee will be roasted and distributed by Capitol Grounds Café and Roastery in Montpelier, VT and Wicked Joe in Brunswick, ME. The standard subscription will run $18.50 for two pounds, plus shipping and handling.  Initially, orders will only be taken from customers in New England and New York; there are also plans to have it available in regional food cooperatives. The hope is to expand nationwide.

(Canadian consumers can get Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee through the Toronto cafe and roastery Birds & Beans — which has actively promoted and sold Bird-Friendly coffee in Canada for years. In fact, the roaster/owner there, David Pritchard, has licensed the Birds & Beans name to the U.S. initiative and is cooperating to help raise the profile of Bird-Friendly coffee. I have visied Birds & Beans in Toronto and can attest to David’s skill as a roaster and dedication to Bird-Friendly coffee and migratory birds.)

Three very well known bird conservationists and experts in migratory birds will be promoting Birds&Beans coffee by giving talks to educate consumers about the bird and coffee connection. “Voices for the Birds” lectures will discuss the birds that nest in New England — in particular the three species featured on the Birds&Beans packages — and the importance of shade coffee farms to their survival. Kenn Kaufman is an artist, naturalist, and the author of a number of bird books, including Kingbird Highway and the Kaufman Field Guide series. Scott Weidensaul is a prolific natural history writer often focusing on birds; his excellent book on migratory birds, Living on the Wind, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Bridget Stutchbury is a professor of biology and Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology at York University in Toronto. In addition to a large body of scientific work, her book Silence of the Songbirds explained threats faced by songbirds, including loss of winter habitat due to the proliferation of sun coffee. Russ Greenberg, head of the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, will also be participating. A number of regional organizations will help support and promote the talks and the coffee, including Audubon Vermont, New Hampshire Audubon, Audubon Connecticut, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, Vermont’s North Branch Nature Center, and Audubon chapters in New York.

The Birds&Beans web site (www.birdsandbeans.com) is scheduled to go live early next week. That’s where you’ll be able to find details on the coffee and subscriptions, as well as a list of events and talks. As a certification program run by a scientific research center, the Bird-Friendly certification generally lacks marketing, so this is a really positive step in raising awareness of sustainable, shade coffee in general and the strength and benefits Bird-Friendly certification in particular.

If you are in the New England/New York area, I encourage you to check out the coffee and the talks, and send me some feedback.