The truth about Bird Friendly coffee

 Scarlet Tanager (Photo by Texas.lorarend:) )

If there was an iPhone app that kept you up to date on the latest trends, it would tell you that social responsibility is in. Companies everywhere are going organic, promoting causes, like breast cancer; championing groups of disadvantaged people, like the autistic; helping Mother Earth and her myriad creatures. This is admirable of course, even if somewhat manipulative and tedious by now. But advertising is, by nature, manipulative.

The coffee industry is not immune to this trend. Organic coffee is getting easier and easier to find. Every day, public awareness about Fair Trade and shade-grown coffee grows. And now…drum roll, please…we have Bird Friendly coffee.

Made in the Shade
According to Bird Watcher's Digest.com, shade-grown coffee farms are home sweet home for

various species of warblers, vireos, orioles, grosbeaks, hummingbirds, tanagers, and many more. In addition to birds, shade coffee plantations provide habitat for orchids, insects, mammals (such as bats), reptiles, and amphibians."

At one time, all coffee was shade-grown, but about 25 years ago, coffee tree hybrids were developed. While they couldn’t leap over buildings in a single bound, these hybrids could withstand full sun and yield a sizeably larger crop. As a result, farmers cleared their land of trees to increase production. Since then, over 50% of the traditional shade-grown farms have become sun coffee farms.

Unfortunately, as reported by Grounds for Change, “the increased yields of full-sun coffee come at the expense of the environment, the flavor of the coffee itself and of migratory bird populations, which have been decimated in the last 25 years.” Decimated might be overstating the situation, but certainly, chopping that many trees can’t help but affect the bird population. (View the slideshow to see some of the affected birds.) Enter the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC.)

“Forest of Dreams”
In the movie, Field of Dreams, Ray Kinsella (Kevin Costner), leveled his cornfield and built a baseball stadium in the hope that “he will come.” Similarly, the SMBC hopes that the birds will come to coffee plantations they’ve certified as Bird Friendly, a mark they created in the late 1990s. Their rationale is that birds don’t care if the coffee is being grown for commercial reasons. One study conducted in Mexico found over 140 species of birds in shade coffee farms while sun-coffee farms contained only 5-6 species.

The Red Tape
Bird Friendly isn’t an arbitrary label that any coffee farmer with a few birds sitting in his coffee trees can use. The criteria required for qualification are stricter than those for “sustainable coffee,” certified by the Rainforest Alliance. They include: an organic certification, a minimum 12’ canopy height, 10 or more woody species, 3 layers of foliage, and at least 40% foliage cover, among other things. In fact, Bird Friendly is the only triple certified coffee choice--organic, fair trade, and shade grown.

The certification process doesn’t cost the farmers anything, and once certified, they can charge more for their crop, but considering the number of complicated hoops they must jump through to qualify, it’s no wonder that BF coffee isn’t a staple on supermarket shelves.

Finding Those Birdy Beans
Perhaps the SMBC needs to produce a documentary with Al Gore to get its message out because despite the eco-merits of Bird Friendly coffee, the demand for it remains very small. Only about 5% of the specialty coffee market is organic, and Bird Friendly coffee is an even smaller percentage of that.

Still, BF coffee is affordable, running about ten bucks a pound, not including shipping. There are only 14 importers of BF coffee in the United States, however, online shopping makes it easy to obtain. Here are some vendors.

Bean North Coffee Roasting Company Ltd $51.70/5 lbs.

Café Valverde  $9.95/lb.

Coffee by Design $10.75/lb 

Distant Lands Coffee $8.99/lb (on sale)

One more thing: 25 cents from the sale of each pound goes to SMBC research and conservation programs.

Sources:

• Bird Watchers Digest.com
• Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center
• Grounds for Change
• Seattle Audubon Northwest Shade Coffee Campaign 

• The Songbird Foundation
  

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