This Eco-Alert brings home to me that our places are interconnected with other places all over the world, and what we do in our home affects those other places for better or worse. Think Globally, Act Locally –MW
Ahh... a hot cup of coffee first thing in the morning, cradled in your favorite urn, the witches brew that brings your senses alive! The piercing aroma, the warm cup, the convection current of cream that looks like a July thunderstorm. You step out onto your back porch and behold the new day with a cautious sip. Orioles are at the feeders tugging at oranges while tiny green and pink helicopters are drinking from the hummingbird feeders. Slurs, buzzes, and whistles hop from branch to branch overhead. Indeed, nothing could be more stimulating than a hot cup and the crackle of the morning chorus.
Millions of times each day this scenario is played out across America and yet, only a tiny percentage of coffee drinkers have ever heard of the “Coffee Connection.” At this moment shade-tolerant coffee plantations are being converted to plants that grow in full sun in part because of the amount of funding made available by United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The new coffees have higher yields and higher profits but reduce the amount of habitat available for neotropical migrant songbirds. These newer sun varieties also require intensive plant and insect management and nitrogen inputs. In areas converted to sun coffee, 90% fewer birds were found. The very routine of jump-starting our day is jeopardizing the tropical jewels we enjoy watching.
Many of our favorite backyard birds are neotropical migrants, birds that spend part of their year nesting in North America and migrating to Central and South America for our winter. They go to countries like Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Peru and Columbia, places famous for their diverse rainforests as well as their coffee. Plantations of coffee and chocolate which use forest canopies are highly beneficial to neotropical migrants, second only to undisturbed rainforests. In places where rainforests have been cleared, these plantations provide the only available habitat. 120 species of North American birds including warblers, orioles, tanagers, cuckoos, hawks and falcons use this habitat for up to five months of the year. When the forest is cleared, we not only change atmospheric dynamics and reduce local biodiversity, we are also impacting our neotropical migrants.
During the past twenty years, coffee producing countries have shifted from growing coffee beneath the dense forest canopy, to growing it in full sunlight. Of the 6.9 million acres of coffee planted in Mexico, Columbia, Central America and the Caribbean, about 40% have been converted to sun coffee, or technified (Rice and Ward, 1996). The shift was made in part because of coffee leaf rust called “la roya” which devastated the Indian and Sri Lanka coffee trade during the late 1800’s. The coffee leaf rust reached Brazil in the 1970’s and it served as a catalyst to modernize how coffee was grown. By moving coffee out from under the shade and into full sun, the fungus would have a less likely chance of survival. It would also bring higher yields, greater profits, quicker maturity, and greater efficiency.
The plan worked and the leaf rust was not the catastrophe that many feared. However, during this same modernization period it was observed that the plants grown in the traditional shade-tolerant way did not suffer from the effects of leaf rust either. As it turns out, the cool temperatures of high elevation plantations and the long dry season were responsible for the leaf rust’s demise. Why did these countries continue to modernize?
“When a butterfly beats its wings in the U.S. Congress, there is a thunderstorm in Central America.” This saying is very popular among the coffee producing countries because of the impact American politics has on policy and funding in Central and South America. The major push for modernization was put in motion by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). In the twenty year modernization period they have funded projects that have totaled nearly $80 million. There are still projects targeted at coffee growers in El Salvador, Haiti, and Guatemala. Some good news may be on the horizon with USAID. There are projects pending that are looking at price supports, development, and marketing shade-tolerant coffee. So what can you do?
Buy shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee and continue educating yourself on the issue. Go to your local grocery store and ask if they have shade-tolerant coffee available. Continue educating friends and relative about shade-tolerant coffee and consider giving it as a gift for holidays, special occasions, and birthdays. Write a letter to your local paper or Audubon chapter and stop in at your favorite coffee house and ask for shade-tolerant blends. If the general public understands the link between their morning beverage and the birds in their backyard, they may create a demand for shade-tolerant coffee.
A wonderful example is the dolphin-free tuna issue in the mid-80’s. People who will never see the ocean or a dolphin in their lives voted with their wallets and created a demand for dolphin-free tuna. Hopefully an educated public will once again vote with their wallets. For more information on the “Coffee Connection” go to the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center at www.si.edu/smbc and click onto “Coffee, Conservation, and Commerce in the Western Hemisphere” by Robert Rice and Justin Ward. There is also a listing of criteria for organic coffee and a list of organic coffee companies. Another good site is the American Birders’ Association Web-site with Thanksgiving Coffee Company at www.songbirdcoffee.com.
When you step outside your back door and your senses buzz with the beauty that our backyard birds bring, I hope that you can look into your heart and know that you are one of the people responsible for the success of our neotropical migrants.
Below
is list of some coffee companies that sell shade-grown, bird-friendly coffee:
Adam’s Organic Coffees: (415) 864-3830
Allegro Coffee: (800) 666-4869
Aztec Harvests: (800) 639-2378
Cafe Altura: http://www.cafealtura.com/ (805) 933-3027
Elan International: (619) 239-8383
Royal Blue Organics: (800) 392-0117
Equal Exchange: (617) 830-0303
Frontier Coffee: (319) 227-7996
Harbor House Coffee: (800) 541-4699
Thanksgiving Coffee: http://www.thanksgivingcoffee.com/songbird.lasso (800)
648-6491
InterNatural Foods: (201) 909-0808
Montana Coffee Traders: (800) 345-5282
Nature’s Finest: (800) 237-5205
Organic Coffee Co.: (800) 758-5282
I found Equal Exchange “Azteca Blend” (organic, shade grown) coffee
at Trader Joe’s for $6.99 a pound. Commerce with a cause! —Northern
Editor, Dan Webster
Mike Havlik now directs (and created) Iowa’s first residential outdoor education program for the Des Moines YMCA. He was formally a naturalist, and assistant director at Woodleaf Outdoor School. He promises to one day write an article about this experience.
Read more about the "coffee connection" (and where to find "bird friendly" coffee) at: