Shade Grown Coffee

Every year, millions of songbirds leave their nesting ground to head south to their wintering grounds.  While some may travel no farther south than Texas, most of the birds we are familiar with travel to Mexico, Central and South America.  Research is finding that nesting success in the U.S. depends largely on the birds’ food supply in their wintering grounds which are being converted to cropland and for other activities. 

One of the first letters I received when I started working as the Southwest Regional Representative (which included Latin America) for National Audubon Society was a letter from the newly formed El Salvador Audubon Society, asking for help to save a local shade coffee plantation.  The severe deforestation in El Salvador (97% of the forest was gone, the remaining 3% survived only because it was on the top of very steep mountains) meant that the traditional shade plantations were the birds’ next best habitat.  In El Salvador, the shade plantations were being lost to development and to the imported full sun coffees.  These new plantations require large amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  Each coffee bush produces more beans than the shade-grown coffee, which served to increase the supply of coffee beans.  This in turn lowered the cost of beans, squeezing the shade farmers even more. 

Several conservation groups recognized this problem.  They set out to create a better market for the gourmet, shade grown coffee to create an economic incentive to maintain the traditional shade tree plantations. 

 The shade grow coffee takes longer to mature, so the beans develop more sugar, leading to a richer, better tasting coffee. 

For hard-core coffee drinkers forced to switch to Decaf (including my Dad!), the Songbird Decaf has been a real find.  It’s so good, we’ve received thank you notes for introducing people to it!!!

 E-mail  us for information on which stores stock coffee, or how to order the Audubon Shade Grown Coffee.

Shade grown coffee 2 links.

Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center – One of the leaders in promoting shade grown coffee.  One of their articles you might want to jump to directly:  Why Migratory Birds are Crazy for Coffee

 Sun vs. Shade from the Songbird Foundation

 Shade Grown Coffee for the Birds from the Environmental News Network,  reminding us that while shade grown coffee is better than full sun, it’s no substitute for an intact forest.

 Scientist’s Tout Shade Grown Coffee, an AP report from the Georgia Wildlife Federation Home page.  This includes the interesting news that when Starbucks introduced shade-grown coffee in their stores, they quickly sold out!  I remember the early days when Audubon and other volunteers first tried talking to Starbucks, and were greeted less than enthusiastically!  Grassroots efforts do pay off.

 Clouds in the Coffee, an E-magazine article by Chris Wille, (a true eco-journalist who left the National Audubon Society to start a non-profit organization in Costa Rica specializing in teaching journalists to cover environmental issues in their country, and is now the director of the Rainforest Alliance’s Conservation Agriculture Program, the folks who bring you the ECO-O.K label).   Chris also had a great article in the November-December 1994 issue of Audubon Magazine, “The Birds and the Beans.” 

 TED Case Study:  Shade Grown Coffee.  This is one of a series of case studies done for the Trade Environment Database, one of several Mandala Projects (on the American University website).  According to their website, “The Mandala Projects is a collection of cross-discipline efforts to examine the impact of globalization of peoples and people. It looks across disciplines, boundaries, media and other "virtual" barriers to provide integrated information and research. The Mandala Projects is an umbrella organization for the related but different projects…”  This is an interesting (but dry, very dry), business oriented assessment of Shade Grown Coffee.

 Because not all shade plantations are created equal (and some are not much better for the birds than the full sun plantations), you may want to read the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center’s article, Shade Management Criteria

 The Responsible Coffee Campaign has, according to their website, two purposes.  “One is to alert faculty, students and staff on U.S. campuses to the impact they could have on "southern" social and environmental conditions by asking their institutions to provide alternative coffees. The other is to supply information and sources for getting more to those who are confused about the claims being made on behalf of this or that coffee. Such information also may serve teachers who wish to use coffee as a case study of international trade in an era of globalization and technified agriculture.”

 Are you wondering if you can get organic, fair trade and eco-ok coffee all in one cup of coffee?  Chris Wille explains the difference in “How green are your beans?” published on the Rainforest Alliance website.