Dear Tweets,
One note I have seen repeated several times in the rhubarb on this
subject is the plaintive question of whether organic coffee is shade grown.
For all practical puposes, the answer is yes. To grow sun or plantation
coffee the trees (jungles) are completely cleared and the coffee bushs are
planted in close rows, the fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and
irrigation are applied. The traditional way was to plant the bushs under
taller trees and let nature pretty much take its course. The traditional way
made little or no use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers and most of the
surviving shade grown coffee producers are very small. Family farms so as to
speak.
Much of the gourmet coffee is shade grown since the 'sun' coffee tastes
so much worse. Like the difference in taste between tomatos picked ripe from
your garden and winter tomatos from south of the border.
These are my impressions from the article in Audubon Magazine and the one
in Birding. I am open to corrections.
In our case, out here on the Olympic Peninsula where the mill economy and
the loggers with their militias and Property Rights groups are stoutly
resisting the elitist waves of retirees (one of the biggest billboards in PA
belongs to the John Birch Society) we can still get organic coffee at Sunny
Farms which is a popular general grocery in Sequim (an elitist beachhead)
which caters to vegetarians and other preppie cranks. They carry coffee from
(among others) Frontier Coffee Company from Norway, Iowa which is certified
organic. My daughter and her husband run a CSA (Community Sustainable
Agriculture) organic garden farm here and are organic vegetarians. They
belong to a local buying coop and since the Audubon article we get our
organic coffee from that source (they list Frontier and several others in
their catalog) at a great discount but it is still more expensive than
Folgers from Costco.
My comments in the last paragraph are tongue in cheek. Many of the
loggers and far right people I have met here are thoughtful and intelligent
and want to preserve wildlife, particularly fish. They frequently have
different starting points. It is like James Watt who belonged to a religious
group that believed the end of the world was near and God was going to be
very irritated if all the resources hadn't been used that he(she?) provided
for us. If the premise is right it all makes sense.
Bob Norton, Joyce, WA (near Port Angeles), retired government doctor
norton360 at aol.com
(360) 928-3053