I am terrified of birds. But when it comes to coffee, I can deal with birds. As a matter of fact I downright love them. Have you ever heard of “Bird-Friendly coffee”? Birds are one of coffee’s best friends. When coffee is grown on a farm under a shaded, forest. It’s considered “Bird-friendly”.
Before the early 70’s, coffee was all “shade grown”, and because of that, coffee trees are naturally sun-intolerant. With “innovations” in coffee agriculture, new varieties were engineered that not only were sun tolerant, but yielded 2-3 times more coffee than the sun-intolerant varietals. Currently in the Amazon, there is a practice to slash and burn land to make area for these farms. So, I ‘m sure you know the next sentence, but here you go, somebody’s got to say it! Higher yield per plant increases profit margin. So we can pretty much guess which varietal is planted en masse. Sun tolerant.
So just in case you didn’t already have a reason to try to save the Amazon forest.
A Shaded coffee farm provides food, water and shelter that the rain forest birds otherwise wouldn’t have, especially in clear-cut sun coffee farms. Some studies have shown, in fact, most shaded farms support over 150 species of birds which has been known to exceed sun coffee plantations by a substantial amount.
Birds also keep the infamous coffee bore in check, which allows us to continue to consume our cups!
So in short, whenever possible, buy shade grown coffee. It’s just good.
-Darrin
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