Try a Cup of Bird-Friendly Brew During National Coffee Week

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TO FEATURES AND ENVIRONMENTAL EDITORS:

Try a Cup of Bird-Friendly Brew During National Coffee Week

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 -/E-Wire/-- National Specialty Coffee Week is Feb. 12-19 and Environmental Media Services (EMS) has put together background and contacts for reporters on the ultimate specialty brew: "shade-grown." Besides helping family farms, choosing shade-grown coffee ensures the survival of those songbirds in your backyard.

How? Coffee is a shade-loving shrub that thrives under a canopy of diverse trees. Traditional, shade-coffee farms have long been the wintering spot for America's songbirds -- up to 10 billion of them -- that migrate to Latin America each year.

But Americans' love of coffee has encouraged coffee plantations to industrialize production, growing coffee in huge fields under open sun and requiring heavy doses of chemicals. This is bad news for birds, whose numbers have been declining across North America as sun coffee farms have increased in popularity.

EMS has fact sheets on shade-grown coffee, migratory birds and sun vs. shade growing. We also have a list of experts on the subject, from Smithsonian scientists to coffee companies. Go to http://www.ems.org/shade_grown/factspromo.html.

Here's why shade-grown coffee is important:

Â· Trees. Traditional, shade coffee farms resemble forests. Such farms offer a refuge for species hard hit by deforestation.

Â· Birds. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found a 1 to 3 percent decline of migratory birds each year in a decade-long study. Although other factors may be involved, the traditional, shade-grown coffee was declining at precisely the same time. Only about four birds live on sun coffee plantations for every 100 living on traditional coffee farms, studies in Mexico and Colombia found.

Â· Land. Songbirds are the most telegenic victim here, but also alarming are the related concerns of sustainable agriculture and pesticide overuse. In the most technified sun farms, the soil is effectively sterilized and rendered dependent on chemical inputs, much like familiar industrial farming in the U.S. and Canada..

Â· Jobs. The economic advantages of sun coffee are no longer so obvious. Although sun producers, because of large yields, earn more than shade farmers when coffee prices are high, their reliance on chemicals and the techniques of intensive agriculture means that their costs are higher. This leaves them more vulnerable than traditional growers to low prices.

Environmental Media Services

Liz Banse, EMS, 206/374-7795 ext.35 (Seattle)

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