Coffee news and miscellany / Coffee regions

Vietnam: Will replacing old coffee mean more deforestation?

A news report states that half of Vietnam’s coffee trees will have to be replaced in the next 5 to 10 years:

According to the Vietnam Coffee — Cocoa Association, the current 500,000ha of coffee comprises three kinds.

The first is coffee planted prior to 1988, totaling 86,400ha, accounting for 17.3% of the total area. These coffee trees are very old and need to be replaced.

The second is trees grown from 1988 to 1993 on 139,600ha, making up 27.9%. Many trees are growing old and their productivity is declining.

The third kind is trees planted after 1993, with around 274,000ha or 54.8%. These trees are yielding high productivity. In the next few years, Vietnam’s coffee output will depend on this section of coffee.

The article notes that despite warnings from experts and bank loan restrictions, farmers have planted more and more coffee, destroying forest to do so. This is almost all low-quality robusta sold to multinational roasters for grocery store blends.

Vietnamese agricultural authorities have tried to increase quality and discourage poor farming practices, without much success. This article again notes the recommendation to “put an end to the habit of  selling low-quality coffee in the international market” in an effort to move toward sustainability.

This can’t happen as long as the demand from multinationals — in other words, from consumers — remains high. Poor farmers will continue to clear land to plant more coffee. The resulting glut in supply 4 years down the road causes prices to plummet. Multinationals snap up the cheap beans. The cycle of poverty and deforestation continues.

Don’t contribute to this madness. Stop buying cheap, mass-produced coffee.

Update, May 2015: In Vietnam, “Deforestation, monocropping and intensive pesticide use that helped create the boom now leaves coffee farms more vulnerable to climate change,” reports an article in The Guardian outlining the disastrous effects of drought on coffee in the country.

Related posts:

Birds and other biodiversity / Know Your Coffee Birds series

Know your coffee birds: Tennessee Warbler

The Tennessee Warbler (Vermivora peregrina) is a great example of a “Neotropical migrant”: a bird that breeds in North America and winters in the tropics. They can be common to abundant during migration over a wide swath of the continent (including Tennessee, where it was discovered, resulting in the rather inappropriate name). Tennessee Warblers are one of the classic winter residents of shade coffee farms in Central America and northern South America, which led tropical ornithologist Alexander Skutch to conclude that they really should be named “Coffee Warbler.”

A Tennessee Warbler in winter in the Costa Rican highlands.

Tennessee Warblers nest across the Canadian boreal forest. They are one of the warblers that specialize in spruce budworms. In years when these insects are abundant, populations of the warbler swell. In fact, Tennessee Warblers are one of the most important predators of these devastating pests.

On their wintering grounds, Tennessee Warblers like semi-open to open second growth forest, and shade coffee plantations share the habitat characteristics of these forests. On coffee farms, Tennessee Warblers are often associated with flowering trees, especially those in the genus Inga, which are very common on shade coffee farms. Although the warblers may defend a flowering tree, they are also often found in mixed species flocks. Since Ingas do not flower for a long period of time, these flocks may track the flowering trees across the landscape. The warblers also fond of  two other tree genera frequently used as shade trees on coffee farms, Erythrina and Grevillea.

Why do the warblers like the flowering trees? Winter is dry season in the tropics, when insects are less abundant. Nectar becomes and important part of the winter diet of Tennessee Warblers. For this reason, shade coffee farms are considered very important to the survival of this little bird with the understated colors and loud, ringing voice.

Read more:

Photo of Tennessee Warbler by Jerry Oldenhettel. Range map from All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Coffee reviews / Latin America

Coffee review: Terroir Coffee El Descanso

Plainspoken Coffee. A Coffee Review for Ordinary People by Ordinary People, #37.

As noted in the the post with background information on coffee growing in Colombia, finding a notably tasty, really sustainable coffee from Colombia is still not incredibly easy. There are a couple of choices for those concerned with migratory and resident bird habitat preservation. One includes coffees that are often known as “Cerulean Warbler” coffees. Thanksgiving Coffee Company imports and roasts one on behalf of the American Bird Conservancy which was reviewed here (includes background links).

The other option is Mesa de los Santos, a farm that is certified organic, Rainforest Alliance, and Smithsonian Bird-Friendly. We reviewed this coffee from Counter Culture here, but it is one of the most widely available Bird-Friendly coffees on the market. Just Google it and you can get your hands on some pronto.

One roaster doing a great job of sourcing small lot, specialty coffee in Colombia is George Howell’s Terroir Coffee. We recently tried a selection from Terroir, El Descanso. Terroir has run out of the 2007 crop reviewed here, but they will have a new crop available in October 2008.

El Descanso comes from the 8 hectare farm of Jesus Orlando Lopez, at 1700 meters in southwestern Huila. Terroir indicates this is of the caturra variety, although Sweet Maria’s Tom Owen notes (in the pages indicated below) that the farmer is using the castillo variety in his new plantings.

This farm won 12th place in the 2006 Cup of Excellence. At the time, it was indicated that the coffee was sun-grown. However, the Terroir web site notes that El Descanso is being reforested and applying for Rainforest Alliance certification. The bag came with the RA seal on it; I don’t see it specifically listed on the RA site, but there are many producers listed for Huila in a sort of generic form and El Descanso may be included in one of those listings.

In addition to coffee Sr. Orlando Lopez has plots of yuca, sugar cane, and beans, and a couple of pastures. The “rastrojo reserva” is, I believe, set aside for compost or mulch, or may be a fallow field.

The tasters all really enjoyed this coffee, which was obviously a step beyond the ideal Colombian profile. The aroma was distinctive, and our amateur noses couldn’t quite pin it down. Suggestions included honey, fresh baked caramel buns, and yogurt-covered pretzels. Like some of the best and brightest Central American coffees, it had a lovely almost citrus “zing” on the first piping-hot sip. Citrus and honey were again mentioned, as were faint cherry, blackberry, ripe plum or yellow plum (leading to an off-topic discussion of the difficulty in obtaining truly good plums around here). It remained sweet as it cooled, with candy and chocolate notes moving to the forefront.

We really enjoyed this coffee, and felt it was a great example of what the best Colombian coffees have to offer. We gave it 3.5 motmots.

Our next review will be a very nice Colombian that is also Rainforest Alliance certified, always available, and easy to obtain!

Research on coffee growing

Research: Sumatran coffee weak on preserving forest biodiversity

Philpott, S. M., P. Bichier, R. A. Rice, and R. Greenberg. 2008. Biodiversity conservation, yield, and alternate products in coffee agrosystems in Sumatra, Indonesia. Biodiversity Conservation 17:1805-1820.

The vast majority of field research on biodiversity conservation in coffee agrosystems has taken place in Latin America. For that reason, there has been some criticism that using “shade coffee” for conservation may not apply to coffee growing regions in other parts of the world. So this paper, by well-known coffee researchers currently or formerly associated with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Research Center, is a welcome addition to the literature.

This study took place in and around Bukit Barisan Selatan National Park in Lampung province, southwestern Sumatra. Last year, the World Wildlife Fund reported that 30% of the park has been lost to illegal agriculture, mainly coffee which was documented as having been purchased by Kraft and other large roasters (this post summarizes the report’s findings; more on the status of these farms later in this post).

This study looked at differences in vegetation, ants, birds, and crop characteristics between forest in the park, and coffee plots both within and outside the park. These farms all cultivate robusta, not arabica, coffee. Robusta is typically grown in full sun, but it has been shown to benefit (via higher yields) from some shade, especially in poor soil conditions.

Not surprisingly, and consistent with other studies, coffee plots, whether inside or outside the park, had fewer species of trees, ants, and birds than the forest. The forest had far more canopy cover, denser canopy thickness, taller trees, and more epiphytes than any of the coffee plots.

The Oriental White-Eye (Zosterops palpeborsus) was one of the most commonly encountered species in forest, but it was not found in coffee plots either within or outside the park.

Various metrics between coffee plots within or outside the park were actually quite similar, including amount of canopy cover (around 32%), and number of species of trees, ants, and birds. However, although the number of species was similar, there was very little similarity in the species composition of all taxa between coffee plots and forests. This is in contrast with studies looking at the same variables in Chiapas, Mexico, which found much higher similarity between forests and coffee plots. It indicates that these robusta coffee farms in Sumatra do not maintain most forest species.

There are some contributing factors that make coffee farms in this area poor reserves for biodiversity. Sumatran coffee farms use very few species of shade trees, including the non-native Gliricidia sepium, which may not provide proper resources for native fauna. In general, the farms had very poor soil conservation practices, no use of organic fertilizers or compost, and minimal ground cover. Farmers will need help in sustainable agriculture management to help alleviate these problems.

This will be challenging enough for the legal farms outside the park. As for the ones inside, some of the 15,000 families which have illegal plots in the park have been there for up to 20 years, and there is little place in the surrounding landscape for them to farm if they are removed — even if they are provided incentives for farming outside the protected area. Sadly, other studies have indicated that even if they are removed, forest recovery is slow in this area and expensive restoration efforts would likely be required in order to rehabilitate agricultural encroachments.

It sounds like the bulk of this coffee is sold to the large multinational roasters for grocery store blends, who could well afford to assist in developing sustainable agricultural in the area that supports biodiversity and farm family income. These results also suggest to me that consumers should be looking to buy sustainably-grown arabica coffee from Sumatra, purchased via roasters who have relationships with their farmers.

Photo by Lip Kee under a Creative Commons license.