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Organic coffee is not necessarily birdfriendly
By Gunnar Engblom of Kolibri Expeditons
Is shade grown coffee really bird friendly? Cerulean Warbler is a threatened tropical migrant that spends the winter at altitudes of mainly 900-1800m along the east slope of the Andes, south to Peru. We conducted a survey for Cerulean Warbler in Central Peru during Jan-March, 2006. We failed to find it, partly due to extreme poor field conditions with a lot of rain making access a big problem. But part of the problem, may be that the habitat is not as good as it used to be. During the 1998-1999 study from Villa Rica, Smithsonian Institute (Sterling et al) found the Cerulean Warbler only in “rustic” coffee plantations. In such plantations coffee is grown under indigenous shade trees remaining from the native forest before the understory was cleared for coffee. These trees old trees have many epiphytes and dead leaves curled up becoming hiding places for a lot of bugs. Cerulean Warbler is an expert on gleaning the curled up leaves.
We hardly found any "rustic coffee" habitat during our study at the same Villa Rica. Most of what was there 6-8 years ago, has been replaced with fast growing Inga and Albizia as shade trees species that carry no epiphytes and much less leaf cover. Could it be that the coffee boom that market shade-grown coffee, does not actually promote the more bird friendly rustic plantations, but rather promotes more monocultures with Inga and Albizia. It is difficult to tell whether the coffee plantations with Inga and Albizia as shade trees are recent cleared cloud forest or reforested sun exposed plantations. Since there is very little sun exposed coffee plantations in Peru in the first place it is quite likely that the many coffee growing areas in Peru have promoted less complex forest structure than was previously there.
The amount of light available for the coffee plant as well as the humidity is easier to control with these fast growing species with finely pinnated Acacia like leaves. It appears that both yield and quality is higher in such conditions and that the market (ultimately the consumers) does not know how to separate between the terms such as organic, fair trade, birdfriendly and shade-grown coffee, etc.
We interviewed people at the farms and it is clear that many of those areas that previously were considered rustic, have converted to being mono-cultures today.
In our study area very little natural habitat remains covering this elevation near roads. At some of the plantations importers such as Starbucks have rather strict rules for the coffee producers. Reforestation of indigenous tree species is being made. (They should not have been cut in the first place). But in these certified plantations the planted trees are mostly saplings and very small and pays no role, what so ever, to provide food and shelter to the birds. So what about organic. Should be safe for the eco conscious, right? Well, not necessarily! Organic plantations are also often not rustic enough to attract the multitude of birds of the "rustic plantation. On organic plantations industrial fertilizers are not allowed, and as the definition implies pest control can not be chemical, but rather biological control. However, if the ecological conditions have changed so much so that Cerulean warbler does no consider the habitat optimum , one cannot really define organic as bird-friendly (at least not in Peru), can one. Furthermore, the guano that is used as alterative fertilizer, is either from very "unhuman" chicken farms with thousands of chicken packed together and pumped with antibiotics or the guano from the islands of large colonies of seabirds off the Peruvian coast.
The harvest of this guano is far from birdfriendly. Many of the guano producing bird species have populations that are being decimated every year, due to the immense peruvian fishing fleet and during the harvest they are repetively disturbed. Productivity ought to be much lower in these plantations so if more and more coffee drinkers start chosing organic instead of conventional coffee, the total outcome will be that more native primary hill forest will be transformed to these Albizia/Inga monocultures with occational sapplings of native trees to keep up the production.
Maybe some good habit could have been saved, if the production instead had been maximised with conventional fertilizers.
Afterall, one of the main reasons, why conventional industrial fertilizer are not liked in Europe and in North America, is that nutirents leak into the environment and resulting algae blooming and super eutrofic lakes that soon are completely covered in reeds. This is not the case in the rainforest where there is constant LACK of nutrients. Some leaking nutrients would not be a problem. I would like to come across a coffee farm that maximises production with fertilizers and compost and that way can set off a large extent of its land as a reserve for birds. It may still be shade grown since 95 % of the coffee is shade grown anyway, but guano from birds would not be used. This would be truly bird friendly coffee. Maybe a side product we can sell to birders. Verified and certified by Kolibri Expeditions!
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Contributor's Note
This is an expanded and revised article that appeared in our 2006 Newlsetter.
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