Here you will find answers to questions that have been asked of Geoff in the past. This page contains truncated answers, the full responses are linked after the brief answer...yes, Geoff is very verbose.
My friends and I have decided to only buy shade-grown coffee to help protect habitat. I was saddened to learn that Intelligentsia doesn’t offer it. Do you plan to offer shade-grown coffee?
(Michael, March 28, 2007)
Question:
There have long been rumors of coffees, particularly in Africa, that are grown with organic farming practices (no pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides) but cannot be sold as Certified Organic coffee due to lack of the actual certification, presumably for reasons of cost. How does Intelligentsia define and assure "healthy environmental practices" in the absence of a certification?
Geoff's Answer:
It is most definitely true that there is a lot of coffee grown in situations where zero chemical fertilizer, fungacide, herbacide, or pesticides are applied, but where the coffee carries no certifications of any kind. Most of the time these are "organic by default" coffees where the farmer cannot access or afford chemicals, so it’s not a choice to be organic, but simple necessity.
There is cause for much debate about the organic certification in situations where farmers can theoretically access and afford either chemical fertilizer OR certification. A place like Finca Malacara in El Salvador (a contributor to our Los Inmortales Intelligentsia mark) would need to make a choice. Is transitioning to fully certified organic a smart decision?
Most farmers will tell you "no way, Jose". In general, farms experience a significant drop in yield and rise in labor costs when switching to organic. It is hard to run a productive organic farm, especially on a medium/large scale. The amount of organic material needed to give the trees enough nutrition to be productive is massive. The amount of additional labor needed to make it work is also significant.
At the heart of the problem is a lack of market support for organics. The current "standard" premium for green organic coffee is + $0.15. That’s not nearly enough in most cases to balance additional profit vs. loss of yield and higher input costs, including the cost of certifying. So in a strictly economic analysis, the farmer will normally lose by converting to organic. Factor in the three-year waiting period during which the coffee is "in transition" and can’t legally be sold as organic, and now you’ve got another obstacle that discourages farmers from going organic. It is a certainty in my opinion that the premiums for organic coffee need to rise significantly (triple, at least) in order to make conversion to organic an attractive proposition for those farmers who are in a position to do it.
The other question that begs asking is: What is the difference in environmental impact between a that of a well-managed coffee farm that uses fertilizer and practices either zero or very limited, highly discriminate pest/disease control (spot application when needed using the least impactful ingredients) and that of a fully organic farm? I don’t have the answer, but nearly every agronomist I’ve discussed this with has felt that coffee farms which practice "responsible methods" (i.e., approved types of applications, used minimally and with precision, along with full tracking/record keeping) for husbandry and plant management are perfectly sound from an environmental perspective. I’m in the process of collecting some hard data to answer this question.
Another thing to think about is the reason or motivation behind organic farming. It is likely agreed that the number one reason to farm organically is to preserve ecosystem health—flora, fauna, insect and wildlife, water purity, etc—on the farm itself. Along those same lines, protecting farm workers from exposure to pesticides or chemicals is a key.
Farm worker protection is critical, which is why pesticides are a no-no. It is also the pesticides and the herbicides that are of biggest concern when talking about flora, fauna, insects, etc. So those are things we focus on when it comes to meeting our Direct Trade requirements for environmental health, along with the treatment of the used fermentation and transport water (which I believe is the #1 biggest environmental issue for most small farms).
Yes, I would call Finca Malacara an environmentally sound and sustainable farm even thought they are not "certified organic". They are extremely careful and judicious about how they apply any treatments, and their farm is high enough in altitude that it doesn’t have much trouble with insects or fungus anyhow. The owners have made the decision that they cannot support the farm’s development, including all the social programs they run (on-the-farm daycare for children of workers, a health clinic, and a full-time school) unless they produce enough coffee to have an efficiency of scale amidst quickly rising labor costs. Going organic would dramatically reduce their income, at least in the short term. And if their environmental footprint is controlled and sustainable in nature, motivation to move to fully organic practices is minimal to non-existent.
Our biggest priority right now under the environmental header of Direct Trade is water contamination, which I identified earlier as one of the most serious immediate environmental hazards on a coffee farm. Second is use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s what we focus on. But there is every intention to expand our scope and consult with environmental experts to make the environmental component of DT more sophisticated and intense. It’s a process—a crawl before you walk endeavor, where we want to ensure farmers the ability to earn a living from their coffee production and become economically secure. Then we can tighten some screws here and there, and bring them along with us. I don’t believe that things could work any other way.
Back to Top | Download a PDF version | Read Geoff's Full Response...
Question:
My friends and I have decided to only buy shade-grown coffee to help protect habitat. I was saddened to learn that Intelligentsia doesn’t offer it. Do you plan to offer shade-grown coffee?
(Michael, March 28, 2007)
Geoff's Answer:
The majority of our Direct Trade coffees are grown under shade, but there can be quite a difference between the types of shade and the role the shade trees play in the surrounding ecosystem. The most common definition for Shade-Grown is: "Coffee grown under a canopy of partial to fully shaded forest canopy." However, shade can be like snowflakes in that it varies qualitatively and quantitatively from farm to farm. The shade density (as measured using a fisheye lens shooting from the ground up to determine amount of filtration) along with the number and variety of different tree species are the key variables when assessing the quality of the shade.
It gets even more confusing when one considers that shade-grown coffee is being promoted by many different organizations simultaneously, each with a slightly different objective. Many coffee companies and farms currently market coffee as "shade-grown" in the absence of any declared standard or certification. So how to figure out what’s best as a consumer?
While we would all like to have coffee produced under ideal forest conditions, there are current patterns that exist based on country, farm size, and history. For example, it is extremely rare to find a large-volume coffee farm with shade over their trees while smaller farms tend towards more forest. Small farmers in Mexico and Peru tend to grow coffee under lots of shade, whereas Kenyan and Rwandan farmers tend to have much less shade, regardless of how big or big their farms are. These African countries have been deforested for decades as a result of extreme poverty, exponential population growth, and exploitation by colonial powers. There is a lot more land per capita in much of the Americas than in Africa, and it stands to reason that there are more trees.
So what should we take from all this? Perhaps the most important thing to remember about Direct Trade is that the model is all about pursuing maximum sustainability for the coffee farmer. This means we cannot simply isolate one specific component of sustainability to a lead position at the expense of others. A coffee farm with lots of shade that loses money every year and pays the workers below minimum wage is not sustainable. A farm that pays the workers well, has shade, and earns lots of profit but has no filtration for the water waste and ends up contaminating the river does not fit the bill. To really work and be viable for the future, a farm must be sustainable socially, environmentally, and economically. If one of these fails, the rest will eventually fail too.
This is why we believe it is extremely important to avoid dogma and consider the full picture holistically when thinking about any one of these issues. A consumer might fixate on shade and decide never to buy Rwandan coffee since there is very little shade there. How do you think a Rwandan farmer might feel about that? The whole country is deforested and has been for generations. Nearly every inch of arable land is being put into service to try to feed the people in what is one of the most densely populated and impoverished countries in all of Africa. Just over ten years removed from a horrifying genocide, the country is rebuilding and trying to position itself to move forward, and an impressive amount of international donor money has poured into the country to help build infrastructure and revitalize the coffee sector. Is it right of us to tell these farmers we will not support their efforts because they don’t have shade, when it is far beyond their means and the most pressing concern is basic survival.
None of what I’ve said is an argument against shade in coffee…I am one of the biggest believers in the benefit of shade on coffee farms—for the earth, for the birds and animals depend on the habitat, and for the coffee quality itself. Shade is undeniably good, and our buying practices support continuing development of more shade on the farms we work with. All that I hoped to demonstrate is that "is there shade?" is not a yes or no question…and that marketing claims using shade as a lead subject should not always be taken at face value by the conscientious consumer. Rather, I would encourage the consumer to look for details, exercise the power of Google to get a comprehensive picture, and then choose to support products and companies which can demonstrate their commitments to sustainability in coffee (or any other product) by their actions.
Most Shady
- Flor Azul (Nicaragua)
- La Perla de Oaxaca (Mexico)
- Cruz del Sur (Peru)
- Anjilanaka (Bolivia)
- Los Delirios (Nicaragua)
Medium Shade
- Los Inmortales (El Salvador)
- El Cuervo (Guatemala)
- La Tortuga (Honduras)
- Tres Santos (Colombia)
Minimal shade
- Zirikana (Rwanda)
- Flecha Roja (Costa Rica)
Back to Top | Download a PDF version | Read Geoff's Full Response...