Coffee’s Shady Side Is Light at End of Tunnel for Migratory Birds

NEW YORK —  Bird lovers and scientists have brewed up a new strategy to save the habitat of flocks that fly south for the winter: They’re selling coffee.

The National Audubon Society, the Smithsonian Institution and other conservation groups are putting their stamp on shade-grown coffee such as Cafe Audubon, which they hope will save the tall trees in Latin America where U.S. and Canadian migratory birds seek refuge from the cold.

“Consumers want companies to be responsible to the environment and their communities,” says Sarah Comis, Audubon vice president for licensing. “This isn’t just for the birds. It’s for everybody.”

Advocates are hawking “bird-friendly” coffees at street fairs in Seattle, brew tastings in Atlanta and socials in Canadian churches.

They even lobbied at the Baltimore Orioles’ stadium, handing out mock baseball cards encouraging the 45,000 fans to help save the team’s mascot.

Their pitch has moved coffee drinkers who notice fewer orioles, warblers and other beloved songbirds in their backyards. The number of Baltimore orioles, for example, has dropped 20% in the last decade.

“We were surprised at the number of baseball fans who said they remembered seeing the orioles when they were kids, but felt that they’d disappeared since then,” said organizer Peter Stangle, director of bird conservation at the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation.

Scientists are not sure why certain species are dwindling, but they know the decline parallels the felling over the last 20 years of the canopies protecting coffee plantations from the equatorial sun. Birds seek refuge there since so much of the rain forest has been lost in wintering grounds that stretch from Mexico to Colombia.

Until 1996, agriculture experts encouraged large coffee plantations to cut down trees shielding the sun-shy plants and grow high-yield, sun-tolerant hybrids that need high doses of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

“What in essence served as a habitat became a factory,” said Robert A. Rice, policy director at the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center in Washington. “These pruned, managed farms look like English hedgerows, but they are dependent on chemicals to stay alive.”

The Smithsonian center sparked the shade-coffee movement in 1996, gathering 270 environmentalists, farmers and gourmet companies interested in shade-grown coffee as a strategy to save Latin American trees where 150 species of birds nest.

Since then, U.S. companies have developed at least five coffee brands that are certified as shade-grown by independent monitors such as the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. The companies expect to sell 1 million pounds of the coffee this year.

Within the $3-billion market for gourmet beans, sales of shade-grown coffee represent about 1%, or $30 million, according to Ted Lingle, director of the Specialty Coffee Assn. of America.

Underlying the success is a soaring demand for specialty coffees by drinkers who define themselves as espresso heads and latte lappers, who want double decafs with low-fat soy for all the pleasure without the guilt.

Global awareness has long been a marketing tool of the latest gourmet boom, as indicated by the unbleached napkins made from recycled paper and the unrefined sugar that cafes offer amid piped-in Latin music from so-called Coffee Lands.

Of the 6 million acres of coffee lands, 60% have been stripped since the 1970s, says Russell Greenberg, a zoologist who directs the Smithsonian center.

Only small, low-tech farms-- isolated in mountains or by civil war, too poor to afford chemicals and extensive pruning--preserved their shade.

Although they are not true forests, these 700,000 farms produce what many consider some of the finest coffee, where the red fruits, known as cherries, ripen slowly, sheltered from the sun, untouched by chemicals.

“It’s like wine,” said David Griswold, president of Sustainable Harvest of Emeryville, Calif., whose imports are sold by a variety of roasters. “The cherries mature more slowly, the natural sugars increase and it’s a better-tasting coffee.”

However, some of the finest coffees outside the region--for example, Kenyan and other African blends--naturally grow in full sun.

Shade roasts retail for $8 to $12 per pound--on the high end for gourmet blends. But Greenberg says shade isn’t so expensive in the long run.

“The whole world pays the farmer a little more for it now,” he says. “But when coffee is produced in a way that’s not sustainable, it pollutes streams, it gets rid of forest cover, it increases erosion and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide the plants take out of the air,” a process believed to combat global warming.

To get their message across, shade-coffee companies so far have relied on lower-cost methods, such as the Internet, to advertise their feel-good blends. But perhaps the most effective marketing is grass-roots lobbying by groups such as Seattle’s Northwest Shade Campaign, which has gotten more than 100 area stores to carry the product.

Shade-grown brews are now available in more than 1,000 venues, to writers seeking inspiration at cafes, to lingering restaurant diners, and to pet store shoppers attracted to displays featuring Song Bird “Coffee for the Birds,” which gives a portion of the profits to the American Birding Assn.

The United States buys one-third of the world’s coffee--but large companies aren’t yet jumping into the shade.

That includes Starbucks, which says that much of the coffee it buys is already grown in shade and that it’s unfair to ask impoverished farmers to pay extra to have their trees certified as bird-friendly. It also says supply is too limited to consistently offer a single brew.

“Given the volume of coffee we buy, it’s hard for us to say whether the coffee is shade-grown or not,” said Scott McMartin, coffee buyer for the Seattle-based Starbucks chain, which this year pledged to investigate working conditions on one-quarter of the farms it buys from.

Consumers in one of its Manhattan cafes, however, said they’d be more than willing to pay extra for their effort.

“I pay a premium to drink Starbucks and I’d pay a bit more if it were really good for the environment and not just a marketing ploy,” coffee lover Ginger Levinson said.

Promoters of shade-grown coffee say it’s just a matter of getting such consumers to ask for it--like turning Baltimore Orioles fans into Baltimore orioles’ advocates.

“They were intrigued to learn that by choosing shade coffee they could help the species while it was 1,500 miles away,” Stangle said.

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Made in the Shade

Several independent U.S. and Latin American groups currently certify coffee as shade-grown, to distinguish them from imitators. Shade-grown coffee is available from:

* Cafe Audubon (888) 326-2633 or (www.ecocoffee.com), certified by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (www.si.edu/smbc/coffee.htm).

* Central American organics from Equal Exchange (781) 830-0303 or (www.equalexchange.com).

* Song Bird Coffee from Thanksgiving Coffee Co. (800) 648-6491, certified ECO-OK by the Rainforest Alliance (www.songbirdcoffee.com or www.thanksgivingcoffee.com).

* Sanctuary Coffee from Counter Culture (888) 238-JAVA, certified ECO-OK by the Rainforest Alliance.

* Sustainable Harvest (888) 857-6134, certified ECO-OK by the Rainforest Alliance. (www.sustainableharvest.com).

Other shade-grown coffees can be found on the Rainforest Alliance Web site at www.rainforest-alliance.org.