Birds and other biodiversity

New Cerulean Warbler coffee available

You’ve followed the saga of the flagship shade-coffee bird, the Cerulean Warbler, on these pages. If you need to catch up:

  • An introduction to the declining Cerulean Warbler, and its connection to shade coffee on its Colombia wintering grounds.
  • Discussion of the American Bird Conservancy’s (ABC) Cerulean Warbler campaign. ABC partnered to purchase warbler habitat in Santander, Colombia which included shade coffee farms, and also began promoting a Cerulean Warbler coffee, roasted by Thanksgiving Coffee Company, which was sourced in Antioquia, another important warbler wintering region. ABC added more land to the original reserve late last year.
  • News from a bird conference I attended in February was that a new shipment of coffee from Antioquia would be offered by Thanksgiving in March, the plan was to begin importing coffee from the Santander preserve soon. I just browsed through all the coffees at Thanksgiving, and found no Cerulean Warbler coffee, nor did a search turn it up.  There are no direct links on the ABC site either, but a search there provides this page, which  does link to a page to an order page at Thanksgiving.

Sweet Maria’s, North America’s best source of green coffee for home roasters, just received a small lot from Antioquia, I believe the same co-op Thanksgiving sources from (although the lot may be a subset of farmers working on the Cerulean Warbler project). Tom gave this coffee a really good review, which is really encouraging. If you are a home roaster, I encourage you to give this coffee a try — at $5.50/lb. green it’s cheaper than Folgers!

Coffee news and miscellany

What does a great cup of coffee cost?

The biggest obstacle, in my experience, in getting people to switch from crappy grocery store coffee to sustainable coffee is price. Even people who profess to be bird lovers, concerned with the environment, and aware of the issues surrounding sun and technified coffee frequently default to price. This, it seems, is the American way.

Is really great coffee really that expensive?
I recently decided to splurge on some expensive coffee just for myself (while many of the Coffee & Conservation tasting panel is on spring break). I ordered a half-pound bag of the #2 coffee in the 2007 Bolivian Cup of Excellence competition, Juana Mamami Huanca’s San Ignacio farm, from Terroir Coffee Company. It was $34.95. That is high-dollar coffee. But based on two tablespoons of coffee per six-ounce cup, it still works out to less than $3 for a cup of fantastic coffee.

Most of the specialty coffee that is reviewed here costs in the range of $9.95 to $14.95 for a 12-ounce bag. That works out to $0.32 to $0.48 a cup. A pound of coffee from Caribou or Starbucks runs about $13 a pound, or $0.32 a cup. This is at least six times cheaper than a couple of shots of decent scotch or a glass of wine from a $15 bottle, not to mention less than the cost of a cup of (unsustainable) coffee at McDonald’s or Dunkin Donuts.

It might be a little less convenient to make coffee at home, but it’s obviously economical. In fact, I think this little exercise demonstrates that the excuse that specialty coffee is too expensive is a bit far-fetched. Do the math: Folgers is about $0.25 a cup, or you can enjoy this sweet, fantastic, organic shade-grown coffee for $0.55 a cup. All things considered, drinking the grocery store coffee just doesn’t add up.

Photo by Scott Feldstein; thanks for publishing under a Creative Commons license.

Coffee regions

Coffee growing in Australia

Coffee in Australia?
Coffee was first grown in Australia over a century ago, without much economic success. The high cost of labor made commercial coffee growing unprofitable until mechanical harvesting became common in the 1980s.

Today, coffee is grown mostly in the far eastern part of the country, corresponding to the light green subtropical regions on the map (click to enlarge). Two important areas are the Atherton Tablelands in northern Queensland outside of Cairns, with about 30 large growers on over 700 ha, and in northern New South Wales (NSW) just south of the Queensland border, where there are around 170 growers on 500 ha. If you have some sense from the vague atlas in your head that these areas are not high elevation, you’d be correct. Australian coffee is a rule breaker. Not only is the country outside the tropics, but coffee is typically grown at 200-400 meters, not infrequently lower, and rarely much above 900 meters.

Despite the low elevations, Australia grows arabica almost exclusively. The typica variety is grown, but also catuai, Mundo Novo (hybrid of bourbon and typica), and especially Kenyan varieties more suited to the drier Australian climate such as K7 and SL6. Coffee is processed every which-way: some wet processing, some semi-washed (pulped natural), some dry processed (full natural), and a unique method developed by the Mountain Top Coffee Company called “double pass.” This is where a full natural process bean (dried on the tree) is rehydrated before being pulped.

Australia currently produces 200 to 600 tons of coffee annually, half of which is exported, an amount so low it does not even get listed in the International Coffee Organization’s production statistics. It’s rarely seen in the United States, but there has been considerable investment in the specialty coffee industry in Australia along with increasing market presence.

Sustainability
I mentioned the advent of mechanized harvesting helping the Australian coffee industry turn the corner. Mechanical harvesting reduces or eliminates the need for workers to hand-pick beans, which can account for 50% of labor costs. It also requires coffee to be grown on flat land in rows in a monoculture. Thus, all the mechanized coffee in Australia (which is most of the commercial crop) is grown in full sun (an example here).

Mechanical harvesting also works best when the beans ripen simultaneously rather than over an extended period of time. The Australian climate, with pronounced dry seasons, lends itself to this as well. As in Brazil, coffee is irrigated after a dry period — sometimes water is deliberately withheld — in order to induce a bloom.

It’s often written that Australian coffee is grown without pesticides, as most of the usual coffee pests are not present Down Under. However, some have been recently introduced (e.g., green scale), and others are a problem as well (brown scale, avocado leaf-rollers, and mealy bugs). Insecticides are in fact used for these insects by some growers. Further, sun coffee usually needs a lot of fertilizer. I have had trouble finding any Australian coffee that is actually certified organic. The Australian Coffee Traders Association even notes, “There are many Australian brands which claim to be 100% organic but the certification is questionable.”

Habitat loss in Australian coffee-growing regions
According to the Australian Natural Resource Atlas (ANRA), 30-70% of subregional ecosystems are at risk in the coffee-growing areas of Australia, with higher instances in NSW. The major growing areas have different types of native vegetation. The major Queensland native type in the coffee-growing highlands is eucalyptus woodlands (pdf), and a good deal of it remains. The New South Wales north coast area is slightly different, with eucalyptus open forest (pdf), although far less native vegetation remains in this region. This loss of habitat contributes to the fact that the NSW coffee areas also have many threatened plant and animal species; it is considered one of the richest bioregions for birds in the country. Although traditionally the area with smaller coffee farms, it is the NSW region that is pushing for a major expansion in coffee production.

The map (click to enlarge) shows the change in breeding bird species reported during the last 20 years. The Queensland coffee area shows no significant change, but the NSW area has a significant decrease. The super-cool endemic Crested Tit-Shrike (Falcunculus frontatus, pictured) is considered an indicator species in both areas, as it is found in both characteristic types of eucalyptus forests. The Black-breasted Button-quail (Turnix melanogaster)
is an example of an endemic bird that is under severe threat from land-clearing due to agriculture; its range is restricted to coastal and near-coastal regions of southeastern Queensland and north-eastern NSW.

In contrast with researching how agriculture and coffee might impact biodiversity in some areas of the tropics, there is an abundance of information on habitats and threats in Australia (almost too much data to digest!), although nothing specific to coffee, given the relatively small footprint. You can read biodiversity assessments for the NSW North Coast and the Einasleigh Uplands of Queensland, which cover the important coffee-growing areas in Australia.

Bottom line
Overall, I was not left with a great feeling about compatibility of natural habitats and biodiversity and the coffee industry in Australia. Australian coffee is not common in the U.S., but the one bag we tried — from a leading Australian brand and a U.S. roaster with a very good reputation — was nothing special. In fact, nobody liked it. It was flat, and the most frequent adjectives were “ashy,” “tobacco,” and “coal.” Should we be able to taste a wider sampling, we will post some reviews, but I’m really not motivated or inclined to seek them out. There are plenty of great coffees from that part of the world that are grown more harmoniously with native ecosystems.

Kangaroo crossing sign by Casa de Queso; thanks for publishing under a Creative Commons license; Climate map from Wikipedia; bird map from the Australian Natural Resource Atlas; Crested Tit-Shrike from the Australian Museum.

Retail and specialty roasters

Allegro/Whole Foods shade coffee promotion

It was nice to be in a Whole Foods Market today and see some of their Allegro Coffee varieties in a display featuring birds and their “Caffeinate Your Conscience with Shade Grown Coffee” promotion, going on through early April. The web site has a brief but accurate blurb about the importance of shade coffee to birds, and a number of species are portrayed on the in-store display. A few were odd choices to represent shade coffee, especially the two shorebirds (Solitary Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs). These shorebirds are definitely long-distance migrants which winter in the tropics, but obviously do not use forested habitats.

On the plus side, Allegro’s three featured shade coffees do come from sustainable sources. All are organic.

  • El Salvador, Santa Adelaida Cooperative. Also Rainforest Alliance certified. You can read my review of this coffee here.
  • Guatemala, Lake Atitlan, La Voz Cooperative. This co-op (full name: La Voz qui Clama en el Desierto), which began growing coffee in 1985, now comprises 120 families. Coffee is grown at 1500 meters in the district of San Juan La Laguna, SololÁ¡ near Lake Atitlan. I believe at one time this was Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified, but it is not currently on their list. If so, it’s more likely this has to do with economics (the expense of renewing certification) versus a change in ecological management.
  • Mexico, Zaragoza, 21st of September Cooperative. Fair Trade certified. This is the same source that was used in the 2007 Counter Culture Holiday Blend, and you can read that review here. I also gave Allegro’s a try. It was a light roast somewhere in between the two roast levels Counter Culture used in their blend, and it was outstandingly sweet and candy-like. Really an exceptional example of a chocolatey classic Latin American coffee.

Kudos to Whole Foods and Allegro Coffee Roasters for bringing the birds and coffee connection to the attention of the public.