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Coffee

The Backstory

Though grown primarily by families on small farms, coffee is still the most valuable legal export commodity in the world behind petroleum, according to the World Bank. Unfortunately, booming demand for java has resulted in a massive shift away from traditional, environmentally beneficial growing methods to more damaging ones, and it's led to an overproduction glut that forces farmers to sell their beans well below the cost to grow them.

Environmental Issues

To get the highest yield possible, conventional coffee farms are situated on clear-cut land, exposed to full sun and treated with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. "Full-sun" farms have led to staggering deforestation, particularly in Latin America where numerous tropical ecosystems have disappeared or are on the verge of elimination. Deforestation has been spurred, in part, by a drop in coffee prices that led farmers to opt for growing methods that would provide them with a higher profits (see "Low Wages for Growers," below), but it's environmental damage is extreme. Habitats have been decimated, not only for indigenous wildlife, but for countless numbers of migratory birds as well. Sixty to 80 percent of bird species that inhabit forests throughout the eastern U.S. and Canada spend their winters in Latin America, and studies have found over 90 percent fewer bird species in sun coffee farms than shade farms. This, of course, says nothing of deforestation's contribution to global warming.

For nearby aquatic populations and for wildlife that do take refuge on full-sun farms, pesticides and chemical fertilizers might pose a threat. For example, endosulfan, an insecticide widely used against the coffee berry borer beetle, harms the reproductive systems of aquatic species and mammals and causes behavioral and biochemical changes in fish. Runoff from agricultural fields where endosulfan was applied has killed fish in mass quantities. Lindane, which has been used internationally as an agricultural insecticide, is very toxic to fish and other aquatic life and is believed to cause birth defects in amphibians. Still used as an insecticide in many developing countries, DDT was banned in the U.S. in 1972 in part for causing long term reproductive problems in birds and contributing to the near extinction of certain species including the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon. The non-selective insectide methyl parathion kills beneficial species, such as bees, as well as pests, is highly toxic to aquatic invertebrates, and moderately toxic to birds.

Social Issues

Worker Welfare

Sun-grown coffee is sprayed with a number of pesticides, but residues that reach the beans are mostly burned away in the roasting process and so pose little risk to consumers, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, farmers and workers on coffee plantations aren't so lucky. Coffee trees grow primarily in the tropics of Africa and Latin America where growers pick the berries by hand. They are exposed to chemical fertilizers and pesticides daily, some of which sicken workers and increase their cancer risk. In 1996, the insecticide Miral 500 CS was recalled after one Colombian coffee plantation worker died and three others were sickened following exposure. Endosulfan has been shown to mimic the hormone estrogen and has caused estrogen-sensitive breast cancer cells to multiply in test tubes, and animal studies have found that long-term exposure causes kidney and liver damage.

Not only does sun-grown coffee require more pesticides, but it also needs more synthetic, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers. Synthetic fertilizers have contributed to nitrate contamination in drinking water in Costa Rica, with documented groundwater pollution exceeding World Health Organization levels in some cases. Nitrate contamination of groundwater has been associated with certain cancers, birth defects, hypertension and developmental problems in children.

Decaffeinated coffee is often preferred, especially as an after-dinner brew, but the chemical solvents used to remove most of the caffeine deserve some scrutiny. The most widely used solvents are methylene chloride and ethyl acetate, both of which can be harmful to workers. (According to the FDA, the decaffeination process leaves "infinitesimal" traces of the solvents on coffee beans, and poses no health hazards to consumers.) Methylene chloride is a suspected carcinogen and ethyl acetate may lead to skin problems. The Swiss Water Method, where beans are soaked in water, and the carbon dioxide (CO2) process, using CO2 in its supercritical state (between a liquid and a gas), are both preferable and only these methods can be used for organic coffee. Because the CO2 process is costly, plants take tremendous care to contain it, and there's little risk of its use contributing to global warming.

Low Wages for Growers

Spurred by an overproduction glut in the late 1990s, the price of coffee plummeted from about $1.50 to roughly a third of that by 2001. As a result, millions of coffee farmers have been forced to sell their beans at prices well below production costs. Currently the market price for beans is hovering around .60 to .70 cents per pound, while retailers charge as much as $11.00 a pound for the finished product.

In response to the overproduction crisis, Fair Trade certification for coffee arose to protect coffee farmers from price fluctuations and to reward those who practice sustainable agriculture, in the hopes that farmers not subjected to dramatic price drops would be less likely to resort to deforestation.

Corporate Responsibility

Responding to heightened consumer activism, a handful of corporate giants have taken meaningful steps toward a more environmentally sustainable and socially responsible coffee market. As a result of pressure from grassroots non-profits including Global Exchange and Oxfam America, in 2003 Proctor and Gamble began selling Fair Trade-certified coffees through Millstone, its gourmet coffee division, but has yet to extend the certification to its more widely available Folgers brand. To be compatible with its socially responsible image, Starbucks sells its Fair Trade-certified Cafe Estima blend year-round, and their Fair Trade-certified Kirkland Signature house blend is also available at Costco stores nationwide and in Canada. However, the company has yet to make Fair Trade coffee a viable option for customers by brewing it weekly in cafes, although they do state that its stores will brew a pot of Fair Trade coffee if a customer requests it. Kraft's entire Yuban coffee line is now Rainforest Alliance-certified. Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's warehouse retail chain, is one of the top three U.S. retailers of Fair Trade coffee and carries Bom Dia's Marques de Paiva organic- and Fair Trade-certified coffee, and Wal-Mart stores sell Proctor and Gamble's Millstone. Even McDonald's is carrying Fair Trade, organic Green Mountain coffee in its New England and Albany, New York, stores and Dunkin Donuts uses Fair Trade-certified espresso beans in its espresso drinks. That chain stores are beginning to carry certified beans is good news, but expansion is needed. Much wider impacts could be made, for example, if McDonald's stocked Fair Trade beans nationwide and if Dunkin Donuts used Fair Trade beans for coffee as well as espresso drinks.

Corporations can still be pushed to do more. Find out if your favorite brand of coffee carries any of the certifications above. If not, start a letter-writing campaign to the manufacturer asking them to provide ethical coffee choices.