The Grind Over Sun Coffee
by David Salvesen
Each fall, throngs of fair-weather birds from the United States and Canada venture down great avian flyways to Mexico and Central America to sit out the harsh winter until the next breeding season. Some migratory birds simply pass through this region on their way to points south. The cerulean warbler, for example, makes pit stops in Mexico and Central America on its journey from the eastern U.S. to Bolivia. However, an estimated one-third of all migratory birds that breed in the United States winter in Mexico, Central America, or the Caribbean. Teeming with migratory birds, these areas are the avian equivalent of Fort Lauderdale during spring break.
Unfortunately, with each passing year, less and less forest awaits the seasonal visitors. Much of the forestland in northern Latin America and the Caribbean already has been cleared. In the state of Vera Cruz, Mexico, for example, only about 10 percent of the original forest cover remains. With natural forests dwindling, many birds have sought refuge in the next best thing: coffee farms.
A shade-tolerant shrub, coffee traditionally has been grown beneath a canopy of native forest trees intermingled with fruit trees (tangerines, avocados, bananas, plantains, lemons) and other plants. Robert A. Rice, a geographer with the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (MBC) in Washington, D.C., found a total of 25 species representing 16 different families being used as shade trees in traditional coffee farms in Nicaragua. Other researchers have found more than 40 species of trees on traditional coffee farms. Thispseudo-forest is attractive to a wide variety of migratory birds such as Baltimore orioles, warblers, and vireos, as well as year-round residents such as parrots, toucans, trogons, and woodcreepers. Except for the common bush tanager (Chlorospingus ophthalmicus) few birds actually eat coffee berries.
According to the Migratory Bird Center, the Baltimore oriole (Icterus galbula) actually seems to prefer traditional coffee farms over natural forest. “There seems to be a higher portion of nectarivorous birds in coffee plantations than in natural forests,” observes Russell Greenberg, director of the Center. Plantings of flowering shade trees such as those in the genus Inga provide abundant blossoms, catering to birds like wintering orioles, which, like some other songbird migrants, switch their diet from a staple of insects to one based primarily on nectar.
Even the habitat of coffee farms is disappearing, however. The diverse agroecosystems of traditional coffee farms are giving way to monocultures of high-yielding varieties of coffee grown in evenly spaced rows under full sun, with little or no forest canopy. These modernized or “sun” coffee plantations offer little habitat for wildlife. In fact, compared to traditional coffee farms, modern coffee plantations are biological deserts. According to Greenberg, “the few studies that have been conducted have found that the diversity of migratory birds drops dramatically when coffee is converted from shade to sun.” Ivette Perfecto, associate professor of agroecology at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, agrees. “It’s very obvious that the diversity declines dramatically,” she asserts. In particular, resident birds, many of which are less adaptable and more selective in choosing where they live than migratory birds, suffer from the loss of shadecoffee farms.
Humans have always converted ecosystems from complex to simple: prairies to wheatfields, rainforests to pasture. Coffee is no exception. The conversion of coffee farms from shade to sun, from complex to simple, represents another type of deforestation. “This is the other shoe falling,” observes Greenberg. First, most of the region was deforested, but some habitat remained in scattered forest remnants. Now, even the habitat in coffee farms is being lost. Figures vary among countries, but in Colombia, as much as 70 percent of the coffee areas are planted with modernized coffee.
From Old World to New World
Coffee evolved as an understory shrub in East Africa, in what is now Ethiopia and Sudan. Legend has it that an Abyssinian goat herder noticed his goats became unusually frolicsome after eating bright red berries from a shrub growing wild in the pasture. He tasted the berries and soon realized their stimulating effect. The goat herder shared his discovery with a nearby monastery, which developed a beverage made from boiling the berries. The new brew enabled the monks to stay awake during evening prayers. Years later, traders brought coffee across the Red Sea into Arabia (Yemen).
The Arabians initially prepared coffee from green, unroasted seeds, or beans, which they extracted from the fleshy berries and then boiled in water. Later, they discovered the beans' taste improved dramatically if they were roasted and ground before adding them to boiling water. Coffee also found favor as medicine and was fermented to make wine that was used in religious ceremonies. As early as the 7th century, the Arabs began cultivating coffee. And as coffee developed into an important item of commerce, the Arabs protected their monopoly by prohibiting uncooked berries from being exported. Still, traders eventually smuggled viable seeds out of the region. By the early 1500s, coffee was being grown in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt. And by the mid-1600s, the Dutch were cultivating coffee commercially in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Java.
The French, however, are credited with introducing coffee to the New World. In the early 1700s, a young French naval officer, Gabriel Mathieu de Clieu, obtained (some say stole) three coffee plants from a greenhouse in Paris and set sail for Martinique. En route, the ship apparently was beset by violent storms, pirates, and a serious water shortage. Yet somehow de Clieu managed to keep one seedling alive and planted it in the fertile Martinique soils, where it thrived. From there, coffee cultivation spread first to Brazil, where it quickly became a highly profitable export crop for the Portuguese colony, and later to the rest of Latin America.
Today, over two-thirds of the world’s coffee is grown in Latin America and the Caribbean, where coffee is a major source of foreign exchange. Brazil, which got a head start on the rest of Latin America, is the world’s largest exporter of coffee and accounts for over 25 percent of world production. In dollar value, coffee is the second largest legal export crop worldwide, next to oil. It is a commercially important crop in more than 50 countries, and the third largest import in the U.S., behind oil and steel.
There are two main economically important species of coffee: Coffea arabica and C. robusta (also known as C. canephora). Both species thrive in a hot, moist climate and rich soils. Arabica requires abundant rainfall and year-round temperatures of around 70 degrees F, restricting its cultivation to tropical, mountainous climates at altitudes of 2,000 to 6,000 feet. Robusta, in contrast, grows well at lower elevations throughout the tropics. According to the Specialty Coffee Association of America, based in Long Beach, California, arabica beans are more delicate and flavorful than robusta and sell at higher prices. Robusta beans are often used in the processing of instant coffees and popular commercial blends. Almost all of the coffee grown in Latin America is arabica.
Made in the Shade
Although coffee is an introduced species in Latin America and elsewhere, its cultivation remained virtually unchanged for over a century. A traditional coffee farm is a multilayered ecosystem with an understory of coffee shrubs, a middle level of fruit trees like avocado (Persea americana), and an upper canopy of native hardwoods such as Mexican cedar (Cedrela mexicana). The diversity of vegetation and the intermingling of different layers is what creates such rich wildlife habitat.
Generally, there is a direct correlation between the structural diversity of an ecosystem—the layers of habitat—and species diversity. This certainly holds true for most traditional coffee farms. Indeed, biologists from the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center found that traditionally managed coffee plantations in eastern Chiapas, Mexico, support over 150 species of birds, a number exceeded only by undisturbed tropical forests. Likewise, researchers have found the diversity of invertebrates in traditional coffee farms approaches that of an undisturbed forest. For example, researchers at the University of Michigan found 27 species of ants and 126 species of beetles in a single tree in a shaded-coffee plantation in Costa Rica. A variety of mammals have also been seen in Central American coffee plantations, including foxes, weasels, kinkajous, squirrels, a variety of bats, and, in lowland areas with adjacent forest, spider and howler monkeys. This is not to say, however, that a traditional coffee farm supports the same level of biodiversity as a native forest.
As ecologically diverse agroecosystems, traditional coffee farms not only provide a diversity of wildlife habitat, but also benefit farmers economically by providing a variety of products for local consumption and for sale. Avocados, bananas, tangerines, honey, and timber offer another source of income for traditional coffee farmers and a bit of insurance during lean times, such as when coffee prices are low.
A traditional coffee farm is virtually a self-sustaining ecosystem, with little or no pesticides, fungicides, irrigation, or fertilizers necessary. At least in the Western Hemisphere, according to Perfecto, “Coffee is not one of those crops that is loaded with insect pests.” In traditional coffee plantations, predation by birds, spiders, ants, and wasps helps keep insect pests in check. Moreover, coffee’s alkaloid leaves make them unpalatable to most insects. Those insects that evolved mechanisms to overcome coffee’s defenses probably were left behind when coffee was brought to the New World, although a relatively new arrival, the coffee berry borer (Hypothenemus hampei) has been wreaking havoc in coffee plantations in Nicaragua and Mexico, and is slowly spreading throughout Latin America.
Weeds and erosion generally do not cause problems on traditional coffee farms. Leaf litter forms a thick carpet of mulch, reducing evaporation, protecting the soil from erosion, and keeping weeds at bay. Also, the protective canopy buffers the soil from desiccating winds and the erosive forces of rain. The same cannot be said for modernized coffee farms.
The Industrialization of Coffee
Starting in the early 1970s, coffee farmers began to abandon time-honored growing methods in favor of more modern methods that relied on new, high-yield, densely packed, dwarf coffee plants grown in full sun, nurtured with fertilizers, and protected against attack with an array of insecticides, herbicides, and fungicides. Modern coffee farms cram 3,000 to 7,000 plants into about two and a half acres, compared to only 1,000 to 2,000 in the same area of traditional farms. Pumped up with fertilizers, high-yielding varieties easily outproduced traditional varieties grown in shade: 1,000 to 1,300 pounds in two and a half acres for traditional versus 4,000 to 4,400 for modern farms. However, the modern plants last only about 12 to 15 years, less than half as long as traditional coffee plants.
Seduced by the prospect of higher yields, farmers willingly chopped down the overstory, ripped out the old coffee plants, and replaced them with new ones, exposing bare soils to rain, sun, and wind--a trend that continues today. The result has been increased erosion, polluted runoff, a substantial reduction in wildlife habitat, and increased exposure of workers to hazardous chemicals. According to Rice, modern, high-tech coffee farms, sometimes referred to as “technified” farms, suffer significantly more soil erosion than farms with shade trees. Soil erosion is particularly severe on steep slopes, where coffee is commonly grown in Latin America.
Overall, the conversion from shade to sun coffee has rendered coffee farms as useless for wildlife as other tropical monocultures and raises questions about the long-term sustainability of modern coffee production methods. According to Norman Christensen, Jr., dean of Duke University’s School of the Environment, writing in “Science and the Sustainable Use of Land,” (Land Use in America, Island Press, 1996), “the long-term sustainability of ecosystems and landscapes across the hierarchies of ecological systems depends on complexity and diversity.”
The transformation from shade to sun coffee has been supported by international development organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), which has spent roughly $80 million over the last 17 years to promote the technification of coffee throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. AID still has sun coffee projects in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, and Haiti. The modernization of coffee-growing methods mimics the agricultural transformation that has occurred in the production of other crops such as corn, rice, and wheat, where productivity is boosted through the use of machinery and agrochemicals and by planting high-yielding varieties of these crops.
Initially, the main impetus for modernizing coffee production was to combat a fungal pest known as leaf rust (Hemileia vastatrix), which had devastated coffee plantations in the Old World, but did not find its way to the Western Hemisphere until the early 1970s, when it was detected in Brazil. Exposing coffee plants to the sun, the theory holds, dries the leaves and makes the plant inhospitable to moisture-loving fungus. If that failed, fungicides were also to be used. Yet, in Latin America, leaf rust never became the scourge it had been feared to be. According to Rice, coffee and rust have lived with each other in the African forests for millennia. Also, many of the coffee-growing regions in Latin America undergo a prolonged dry season each year, for which the rust is not well-suited. Moreover, rust fares poorly at high altitudes, where much coffee is grown. Eventually, the panic over the arrival of leaf rust subsided. Nonetheless, the switch to sun coffee continued unabated, primarily as a means to increase production.
It is difficult to make generalizations about coffee. Although the dominant trend is toward the removal of the protective canopy and an increased reliance on agrochemicals, particularly in Colombia and Costa Rica, most coffee in Latin America, Asia, and Africa is still grown the old-fashioned way--in the shade. In most coffee growing regions, labor is still cheaper than capital (fertilizers, pesticides, and irrigation). Moreover, not all sun coffee is grown in full sun. Coffee-growing methods vary along a spectrum of full shade to full sun. "We don't have just two systems, sun and shade," explains Perfecto. "There are intermediate systems as well." Some modernized coffee farms retain up to 20 percent shade, while others are completely devoid of a canopy.
Some coffee experts are critical of the notion of politically correct coffee. "The whole focus on bird-friendly coffee is great, but it oversimplifies the issue," argues Kevin Knox, coffee buyer with Allegro Coffee (a wholesale roaster) in Boulder, Colorado. According to Knox, in parts of Kenya and Hawaii, where afternoon clouds and mist are an everyday occurrence, planting shade trees would only exacerbate problems with fungus. "Should coffee farmers [in these regions] be strung up a pole because they don't plant shade coffee? Absolutely not. They'd be foolish to plant it," states Knox. Yet, he cautions against pursuing the "ill-advised experiments of Costa Rica and Colombia. That would be a mistake for most coffee farmers."
Here and there, however, there are signs that coffee farmers are becoming dissatisfied with technified growing methods. Some have found the chemicals too expensive. Others discover that coffee yields eventually level off and in some instances drop. In Costa Rica’s Central Valley, for example, where large and small farmers alike converted to sun coffee, some farmers are beginning to reestablish the forest canopy. “I have talked to several farmers who are putting trees back,” states Perfecto. Some farmers are planting leguminous trees, which fix nitrogen, while others are experimenting with eucalyptus, which they can sell eventually for wood.
Outlook for Shade Coffee
Right now, consumers wanting to purchase "shade coffee" have to settle for organic coffee; for the most part, organic coffee is grown in shade. But walk into any one of Starbucks’ 47 coffee shops in Washington, D.C., and you will not find certified organic coffee on the menu, although the company asserts that much of the coffee it buys is grown on traditional farms in Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia and would qualify as organic. “Most of our growers cannot afford the cost of the certification process,” states Tim Kern, coffee specialist with Starbucks, which is based in Seattle. In Ethiopia, almost all coffee is grown organically. "Not from any vision of political correctness," emphasizes Knox, "but because they've always grown it that way." According to Jim Stewart, founder of Seattle’s Best Coffee (SBC), many growers practice organic farming simply because they cannot afford fertilizers and pesticides. SBC started offering organic coffee four or five years ago, but sales were minuscule, about five 152-pound bags a year. Now it sells about 400 to 500 bags a year. “It’s the fastest growing part of our business,” says Stewart.
Groups that certify crops as organic, such as the Organic Crop Improvement Association, Inc. (OCIA) in Ohio, set stiff requirements for crops that bear their labels. “We have over 40 pages of standards,” states Betty Kananen, Executive Director of OCIA. The association requires that, at a minimum, member farms be chemical free for at least three years immediately before their certification. Farms are also subject to annual inspections. Farmers must pay a one-time membership fee of $250 plus the cost of the annual inspection (about $100 to $300). According to Kern, certification is beyond the reach, financially, of most growers. “Certification is a very complicated process, takes a few years, and costs a lot of money.” Which is why certified organic coffee is expensive, about 10 to 30 percent more than nonorganic. Kananen notes that some areas where several traditional coffee farms are contiguous, farmers have formed community growing groups to share the cost of certification. This lowers the cost per farmer substantially.
The Rainforest Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving tropical rainforests, has developed an “ECO-OK” label for coffee that is “good for the environment and human health,” but is not necessarily organic. Some ECO-OK farmers resort to chemical pesticides occasionally. “We certainly don’t promote the use of chemicals, but we must be realistic,” admits Elizabeth Skinner, manager of the Alliance’s ECO-OK program. The Alliance’s goal is to preserve traditional coffee farms by rewarding farmers who do not switch to sun coffee. “We want to provide incentives to growers to stay with shade coffee,” explains Skinner. Based in Manhattan, the Rainforest Alliance works to ensure that its member farmers receive the bulk of whatever premium is charged for ECO-OK coffee. The Alliance already has developed its ECO-OK label for bananas.
The big question is whether consumers will be willing to pay more for coffee grown organically or on traditional shade-coffee farms. For Starbucks and other retailers, taste is the primary concern. “If we’re going to charge a premium for coffee it must be justified in the cup,” remarks Kern. That should not be a problem, according to Stewart, who asserts that "shade coffee tastes better." MBC's Rice offers one reason: "Some roasters maintain that shade coffee, which oftentimes comes from vintage varieties, has a better flavor.” For some consumers, the knowledge that they may be supporting a small farmer or buying coffee from a farm that provides much needed habitat for wildlife in Latin America may be sufficient motivation to pay the premium. The hope is that someday, buying shade coffee will be like buying dolphin-free tuna.
David Salvesen is a writer and environmental consultant in Kensington, Maryland.
(ZooGoer 25(4) 1996. Copyright 1996 David Salvesen. All rights reserved.)
