Bird Friendly Certified

Why Migratory Birds are Crazy for Coffee
Migrants and Coffee: What's the Connection?

In the midst of altered and shrinking habitat in both North and
Latin America, migratory birds have found a sanctuary in the
forest-like environment of traditional coffee plantations. In eastern
Chiapas, Mexico, Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center biologists
found that traditionally-managed coffee and cacao (chocolate)
plantations support over 150 species of birds; a greater number
than is found in other agricultural habitats, and exceeded only in
undisturbed tropical forest. Even in very disturbed areas, coffee
plantations support good populations of migrants and other
species that prefer or are restricted to forest habitats, such as
redstarts, black-throated green warblers, yellow-throated and
solitary vireos, and residents including tinamous, parrots, trogons,
becards, toucans, and woodcreepers.

However, because of recent changes in coffee production and
marketing, shade coffee plantations are a threatened habitat. In the
past twenty years, coffee has begun to be grown with no shade
canopy at all. While this manner of cultivation produces
substantially increased yields, these cannot be sustained for many
years without intensive management (additions of chemical
fertilizers and a range of insecticides, herbicides and fungicides);
they are also subject to premature death in environments
possessing a marked dry season, and they need to be renovated
(plants replaced) much more frequently than the shade varieties.

Aside from the agronomic risks, sun coffee production has resulted
in major habitat change for migratory birds in the past two
decades. Of the permanent cropland planted in coffee, the amount
under modern, reduced-shade coffee systems ranges from 17% in
Mexico to 40% in Costa Rica and 69% in Colombia. The few studies
that have been conducted have found that the diversity of
migratory birds plummets when coffee is converted from shade to
sun. One study found a decrease from 10 to 4 common species of
migratory birds. As for the overall avifauna, studies in Colombia and
Mexico found 94-97% fewer bird species in sun grown coffee than
in shade grown coffee. This comes as no surprise since over
two-thirds of the birds are found in the canopy of shade
plantations and less than 10% are found foraging in coffee plants.

A Closer Look at the Shady Side of Coffee

Of all agricultural systems in the tropics, shade coffee plantations
have been found to have some of the highest numbers of
individuals and species of migratory birds:

Chan Robbins and Alejandro Estrada, leading a team of bird
surveyors around Mexico and the Caribbean Basin, found that
cacao and coffee plantations supported the largest numbers of
forest-dependent migratory birds of any agricultural habitats.
In Where Have All the Birds Gone ?, tropical ecologist John
Terborgh writes "Some agricultural practices are compatible with the
maintenance of high populations of migrants. This was first
impressed on me many years ago when I conducted some tally
counts on coffee and cacao in the Dominican Republic" He
concluded that "coffee and cacao make good migrant habitat"
although some forest specialist species, particularly residents, may
be missing.
Grown in the time-honored manner, coffee bushes are cultivated
under a forest overstory. Coffee is also commonly grown using
indigenous agroforestry techniques, originally developed for
growing cacao. This involves planting a mixture of nitrogen-fixing
trees with other useful species to provide shade. Up to 40 species
of trees can be found in some traditionally managed plantations,
and many of these are managed for household or commercial
commodities such as wood or fruit.

Shade trees protect the understory coffee plants from rain and
sun, help maintain soil quality, reduce the need for weeding, and aid
in pest control. Organic matter from the shade trees also provides
a natural mulch, which reduces the need for chemical fertilizers,
reduces erosion, contributes important nutrients to the soil, and
prevents metal toxicities.

Traditional coffee plantations can be thought of as modified forest
habitats. Even where a single species of tree is planted as cover,
the trees often produce flower and fruit crops used by omnivorous
birds, such as Tennessee warblers and orchard orioles. Evidence
suggests that up-mountain and northward movements are timed
to take advantage of the blossoming of plantation trees.

In the regions most heavily used by migratory birds--Mesoamerica,
the Caribbean islands, and Colombia--coffee plantation "forests"
cover 2.7 million hectares, or almost half of the permanent
cropland. In southern Mexico, coffee plantations cover an area over
half the size of all of the major moist tropical forest reserves,
providing critical woodland habitat in mid-elevation areas where
virtually no large reserves are found.

Shaded coffee plantations are often the last refuge for
forest-adapted organisms.

Birds are only one indicator of the role that coffee plays in
protecting biological diversity. Ongoing studies of insects, canopy
trees, orchids, and amphibians show that coffee plantations are
often critical refuges protecting forest species where there is no
longer any forest. In Costa Rica, insect diversity in shaded coffee
rivals that found in lowland rainforest areas.

More Than Just a Hill of Beans

Shade coffee presents a tremendous opportunity for both
conservation and economic gain, in that such a relatively benign
form of agriculture has been and continues to be so significant an
economic engine for the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Although coffee originated in the Old World, over 2/3 of the current
world production is exported from Latin America and the Caribbean.
It is primarily grown by families on small farms. Coffee is the third
most common import in the U.S., behind oil and steel, respectively.
The U.S. consumes about 1/3 of the world's coffee.

In dollar value, coffee is second only to petroleum as the most
important legal export commodity in the world. Revenues exceed
10 billion dollars per year. It is the second largest source of foreign
exchange for developing countries around the world and is
particularly important for Latin America and the Caribbean, where it
is the leading source of foreign exchange.

When New Isn't Necessarily Better

Productive sun coffee cultivation requires chemical inputs and
year-round labor, placing financial demands and the need for credits
on the growers. Consequently, most "technification" of coffee
growing (conversion to sun plantations) is done by larger
land-holders.

While technified coffee may signify benefits to producers in terms of
total crop output--a condition which may not hold true over the
long run, and already proven false in some areas where sun coffee
is being grown--the relentless push of agribusiness to produce
more coffee per unit area may have serious environmental and
social ramifications. Conversion to sun coffee appears to lead to
greater soil erosion, acidification, and higher amounts of toxic
run-off. In addition, conversion to sun coffee results in a loss of
trees, which both provide "insurance" crops to the grower (e.g. fuel
wood, timber, citrus, and other fruit trees planted in the canopy),
and help maintain local and micro-climatic conditions.

Where Conservation Meets Market Forces

Increasingly, the relationship between sound agriculture, the
long-term health of rural farmers, and maintenance of biological
diversity is more obvious. Because of its high profitability per unit
area compared to raising corn or beef, coffee growing had been
seen as a way for small landowners to obtain cash with relatively
little investment. Traditional coffee farming reduces the farmer's
dependence on expensive chemical applications, safeguarding
growers and their families from the possible harmful effects of
contact with pesticides.

However, the reliance on a single export commodity by farmers in
many countries often ends in overproduction. The impact of a
worldwide coffee glut was buffered by the International Coffee
Agreement, which called for the stockpiling of stored coffee beans
by participating countries. The collapse of this agreement (1989)
and the trend towards free market economics has caused a crisis in
coffee production. In the wake of the price collapse, countries such
as Colombia have taken deliberate steps to modernize production,
driving small and "inefficient" growers into alternative land uses.
With a simultaneous reduction in access to agricultural credits,
many farmers struggle to make ends meet and some have been
forced to alter their coffee plantations by removing canopy trees for
fire-wood or abandoning coffee as their cash crop altogether.

The conservation of migratory birds depends on conservation of
habitats, but parks and reserves alone will not provide adequate
space for protection. The fate of migratory birds and other
wide-ranging species depends upon the quality of human-managed
habitats. The health of temperate and tropical ecosystems is bound
together by the migration of billions of birds each year--and shaded
coffee plantations play a key role. This form of land use may itself
be on the way to becoming an endangered species. Ponder this
over your next cup of coffee: Would you be willing to pay more for
coffee if you knew the extra money would be used for extension
services and affordable credit for coffee farmers to survive and
grow coffee in a more bird-friendly manner?