[mou] Shade coffee culture

[Bob Powell]

Perhaps I can add a little to the current discussion of shade-grown 
coffee.  In 2000, I was a part of a team that did a reconnaissance in 
Guatemala with the object of ginning up an investigation into the 
biodiversity implications of coffee culture.  Alas, the program never 
materialized, but there are plenty of others that have.  Interested readers 
can find them on the web with any of the standard search engines.  What 
follows is the result of a mere seven days of field work and is not meant 
to be the last word, or even a very highly educated word, but merely a 
general sketch of the situation.

Coffee is very sun-sensitive.  Too little or too much sun reduces the 
yield.  There are four main forms of coffee culture in Central America: 
rustic, multiculture, shade, and sun.  The four forms of culture manage the 
sunlight sensitivity problem in different ways.

Rustic coffee culture is the traditional method.  The understory of the 
forest is cut down and coffee is planted under the tall trees.  This form 
of culture gives a park-like environment that is very pleasant to work 
in.  Rustic culture mimics primary forest to a certain extent.  We believe 
that the basic diversity of bird species in rustic culture is about as 
great as that of primary forest.

In multiculture coffee, many of the big trees are cut down as well.  In 
their place, fruit trees are planted to provide additional produce from the 
land.  Bird diversity in multiculture plantations is significantly lower 
than in rustic plantations, but still provides a nice variety of bird 
life.  Often, one finds fincas where some tracts are in rustic culture and 
some are in multiculture.  These two techniques seem to coexist fairly well.

Shade coffee is grown in plantations where _all_ of the big trees have been 
cleared and replaced by smaller, faster growing trees, usually all of the 
same species.  These trees are managed aggressively to provide precisely 
the right amount of shade.  The trees are removed and replaced when they 
grow to a certain size.  The wood produced by all this arboriculture is an 
important benefit to the workers on the finca, for whom it is usually their 
sole fuel.  The diversity of bird life in these plantations is much lower 
than in either of the two previous types of culture.

Sun-cultured coffee is grown in fields from whom all the trees have been 
stripped.  Sun coffee plantations are virtually devoid of birds.  The 
effects of excess sunlight are managed by the application of 
chemicals.  Sun coffee plantations are very neat and susceptible to 
mechanized agriculture.  They are virtually devoid of birds.  Sun coffee 
gives somewhat higher yields, but demands heavy upfront expenditures for 
chemicals.  This has had the effect of changing coffee culture to a debtor 
economy.  Growers must borrow money at the beginning of each season and 
hope the crop is good enough to pay off the loans.

As usual, the issues are not as clear-cut as they seem at first.  Strictly 
speaking, supporting "shade coffee" does not necessarily contribute to 
conservation of bird diversity in mesoamerica.  If it contributes to 
converting rustic and multiculture plantations to shade coffee culture (in 
the sense used above), the effect is actually counterproductive to the 
stated aims.

Cheers,

Bob
.



Robert D. Powell
Congress Farm Research Institute
Wilmington, Ohio, USA
bob_powell@erinet.com

Ludere cum sacris