Well, Are You or Aren't You?

By Matt Heyden

This is a question that I was asked 10 years ago during the Welcome Back Songbird festival out on the refuge. Adam Kent was presenting a program about shade grown coffee. He then asked the entire group if we even knew what shade grown coffee was. Let's see, an audience full of birders, and not one of us was drinking it. Worse, none of us had even heard of it. I have to admit that I was embarrassed and ashamed both as a birder and a biologist. I was talking the talk of bird conservation , but not walking the walk.

To make a very long story very short, here it is in a nutshell. Historically, "Arabica" coffee grows naturally in the shade of a forest without any pesticides or fertilizers. But it grows slowly. To speed up the process and increase profits, forests were burned and bulldozed so that "Robusta" coffee could grow in full sun. However, the birds were gone and insects thrived, so pesticides were used. Good grief, my whole life I had been drinking lower quality "Robusta" coffee grown in the sun and sprayed with pesticides. I was part of the problem. I was contributing to the destruction of forests that our migratory song birds were depending on. I didn't know any better! But now I do, and this brings me to what we're doing ten years later.

The good news is that today I can buy shade grown coffee at my local grocery store (in rural New York where we live during the summer.) However, to this day, we can't buy it at any of our grocery stores in Florida. When we realized that we weren't going to be able to buy it in a Florida grocery store, we had to figure out another way. But we also had this burning desire to spread the word and promote the idea, so we became coffee suppliers.

A quick search on the internet for shade grown coffee provided several leads. We found a company that would recognize our Nature Committee at The Great Outdoors as an organization and sell to us at wholesale. We then offered it at wholesale to our community. We use Equal Exchange which is "Fair trade" (this means there are no middle men, and instead of buying from huge corporate farms, they purchase from family farms at a fair price), shade grown (you know what that means), but also "organic" (no pesticides). So, what we have is a win, win, win situation. But some more about the coffee.

Shade grown coffee takes longer to ripen. The flavors are more developed. This means you use a lot less of it. We use (I'm not kidding here) one and one half scoops for an entire 10 cup pot. And it is the finest blend of coffees we've ever had. Many of our customers would only buy Starbuck's in the past.

So, now the phone rings at 9 p.m. The voice on the phone says: "I'm out, and I need it." I ask how much they want. "We're going back north for the summer, and we need a full case". Well, yes, that's pretty much how this has grown. However, the secret of this promotion was not gouging the customer. I have to admit that I take a case home with us for the summer. Why on earth would I pay my local market $9.84 per bag, when I'm selling it for wholesale? And this brings us to the problem of trying to be green, and socially conscious, without being taken to the cleaners.

So, now are you or aren't you drinking shade grown coffee? If not, are you ready to investigate the possibility of selling it as a fund raiser for one of the organizations that you belong to? Or perhaps just making it available at wholesale to the general membership the way I do with my Nature Committee. I love a bargain, but a green bargain is even better! Remember, if this weren't important, you wouldn't be reading about it!

In closing, the birds will thank you, the small farmers and their children (who used to have to pick coffee sprayed with pesticide) will thank you, but equally important, it's incredible coffee!