Post by cjm on Oct 1, 2014 17:58:37 GMT
www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-green-is-your-coffee/
How Green Is Your Coffee?
More environmentally beneficial shade-grown coffee has actually declined as sales of supposedly sustainable coffee have risen
Oct 1, 2014 |By Jennifer Huizen and ClimateWire
Specialty coffee now comes with an ever-increasing variety of certifications and labels confirming their supposed benefits for consumers and the environment, but despite these surface changes, has the product on shelves actually become more sustainable?
While many products commonly found in the grocery aisles are just now receiving the environmentally friendly treatment, some are old-timers in the field. Consider the case of coffee.
...
Traditionally, coffee is grown in the shade of dense canopy, intermixed with anywhere from a few to a hundred species of trees and other crops like fruits and nitrogen-fixing legumes, but decades of global coffee price drops drove many producers to chop down overhead trees and clear the understory for denser planting.
When the conditions of production changed, so did the species farmers had to rely on, switching from the more flavorful, less acidic arabica most people would associate with the taste of coffee to robusta, which can grow in almost full-sun conditions.
Jha said traditional coffee-growing practices should be favored because they bring in additional crops, offering continual soil nutrition and structure, and require far less use of fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides while cooling the surrounding area and filtering pollutants from water.
...
How Green Is Your Coffee?
More environmentally beneficial shade-grown coffee has actually declined as sales of supposedly sustainable coffee have risen
Oct 1, 2014 |By Jennifer Huizen and ClimateWire
Specialty coffee now comes with an ever-increasing variety of certifications and labels confirming their supposed benefits for consumers and the environment, but despite these surface changes, has the product on shelves actually become more sustainable?
While many products commonly found in the grocery aisles are just now receiving the environmentally friendly treatment, some are old-timers in the field. Consider the case of coffee.
...
Traditionally, coffee is grown in the shade of dense canopy, intermixed with anywhere from a few to a hundred species of trees and other crops like fruits and nitrogen-fixing legumes, but decades of global coffee price drops drove many producers to chop down overhead trees and clear the understory for denser planting.
When the conditions of production changed, so did the species farmers had to rely on, switching from the more flavorful, less acidic arabica most people would associate with the taste of coffee to robusta, which can grow in almost full-sun conditions.
Jha said traditional coffee-growing practices should be favored because they bring in additional crops, offering continual soil nutrition and structure, and require far less use of fertilizers, pesticides and fungicides while cooling the surrounding area and filtering pollutants from water.
...