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Starbucks soon to have it made in the shade
Eco-friendly coffee to be grown with no sun
Tuesday, August 3, 1999
By ROBERT McCLURE
After grinding its way to the forefront of a worldwide coffee renaissance, Starbucks is offering coffee drinkers a way to escape the dark side of their habit. And we're not talking dark roast here.
For years, controversy has been percolating over some coffee growers' practice of denuding tropical rain forests to establish higher-yielding coffee plantations.
Starting next week, coffee drinkers will be offered a limited-edition Starbucks product -- the company's first guaranteed to be grown in the shade of rain forest plants.
The $12.95-a-pound price is at the high end of Starbuck's wares, and may be tough for many consumers to swallow, but the company seems intent on sweetening its environmental image after activists for eco-friendly coffee leaned on Starbucks to change its ways.
Starbucks announced the availability of the coffee yesterday. Quicker than you can order a double non-fat latte with almond, environmentalists and smaller coffee companies that pioneered the forest-grown market voiced qualified support.
"The beautiful thing about Starbucks putting their toe in the water is that it sends a signal to all the other companies," said Danny O'Keefe, a Vashon Island activist and songwriter who promotes forest-grown coffee. "If they pull that toe out, it tells the other companies that they don't need to worry about it."
The United States consumes a third of the world's coffee. Starbucks, with more than 2,200 stores, serves 9 million customers a week.
In many parts of the world, coffee was traditionally grown in the rain forest. Around 1970, however, producers in Central and South America discovered that hybrid coffees could be grown faster and more abundantly in the sun. They began to clear the rain forest (see map).
In the 1980s, the U.S. government spent about $80 million in foreign aid to help them, said O'Keefe. The U.S. government was trying to help Latin coffee growers profit, but the move sparked a boom in supply that ultimately depressed prices.
The sun-grown coffee leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of environmentalists for a number of reasons.
Clear-cutting the rain forests contributes to an unstable global climate, eradicates shelter for birds and wildlife and contributes to erosion and silting of water supplies.
Among the species affected by the rain forest destruction are migratory birds that winter in the tropics and serenade North Americans in the summer, such as warblers, vireos and orioles.
In the 1980s, biologists recorded drops in the numbers of these birds that sometimes reached 60 percent.
Growing coffee in the rain forest does not leave nature completely unscathed. Low-growing vegetation is still cleared to make way for coffee.
Yet, these coffee forests are more eco-friendly than clearcut plantations. For example, while you might find a dozen kinds of birds on a clearcut plantation, up to 136 types of birds can live in a forest where coffee is grown, compared with about 400 species in virgin rain forest.
Much of the world's coffee still is grown in the shade. But Starbucks' limited-edition Mexican brand is grown by several hundred farmers in a Chiapas cooperative whose produce has been certified as shade-grown by Conservation International, an environmental group that helped persuade Starbucks to begin offering certified shade-grown coffee.
"We know that 100 percent of the coffee is shade-grown, so we can offer it as that," said Mary Williams, Starbucks senior vice president for coffee.
So how's the coffee?
Williams, offering sips to reporters yesterday at Starbucks headquarters near downtown Seattle, spoke as if she were a wine steward, saying the brew offers hints of citrus and caramel.
"It's a light, bright coffee," Williams said. "I think it would be a great coffee iced."
The coffee will only be available for a limited time, perhaps a month or two. Next year, the company expects to have more.
It is grown in areas bordering El Triunfo Biosphere Reserve, a last stand for rare animals such as the jaguar and colorful tropical birds. The area is one of 25 "hot spots" identified by Conservation International that, combined, are home to more than half the world's known plant and animal types.
Other forest-grown coffees have been available for several years, but the idea is growing more popular with consumers. That's one reason Starbucks sought out the forest-grown coffee, the company says.
Before Starbucks' announcement, shade-grown coffee "was sort of a fringe issue, and this sort of mainstreams it," said California coffee importer David Griswold, chairman of the environmental committee of the Specialty Coffee Association of America. "It wasn't that long ago that (Starbucks) mentioned all the reasons they couldn't go down this route."
Williams, of Starbucks, said the company has had trouble finding large volumes of certified, forest-grown coffee good enough to be called Starbucks.
Some who pioneered forest-grown coffee question that, though.
"We welcome Starbucks and we thank them," said Paul Katzeff, chief executive officer of Thanksgiving Coffee Co., which offers a shade-tree brand called Songbird Coffee. "But at the same time, we remind (people) that shade-grown, environmentally responsible coffee has been available to them for a long time."
O'Keefe, the Vashon activist, said he dreams of a day when the United States spends millions setting up a program to certify forest-grown coffees so consumers know what they're buying.
To get there, though, it's important that Starbucks not ask consumers to fork over too many beans for their forest-grown coffee, says Griswold, the California importer.
"I hope they allow consumers to vote with their dollars without making it too painful," he said.
P-I reporter Robert McClure can be reached at 206-448-8092 or robertmcclure@seattle-pi.com
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