Why Shade-Grown Coffee?

By now you have probably encountered the term ‘shade-grown’ coffee, even at Starbucks. So what is it and why should you care? Does coffee grown out of the sun taste better and how can that be if coffee only grows in hot tropical places?

Well, ‘shade-grown’ is partially a misnomer. It really means coffee grown with minimal tree clearing around the coffee plantation and leaving plenty of the natural environment around. This means that it is the coffee plantation equivalent of hedgerowing in Britain, where fields are separated by bushy hedgerows of natural buushes and hedges.

Why not just use a nice clear and clean fence? There are several reasons but hte one most familiar to Americans might be the Oklahoma dustbowl. If you clear way the surrounding vegetation you leave the environment open to all kinds of unsuspected changes that can have unpredictable consequences. Like all the soil blowing away leaving you with an arid wasteland. Or in the coffee plantation maybe just a slow and impreceptible creeping loss of genetic diversity and environmental health.

What IS known is that shade-grown coffee, where the plantations are kept in small growing areas, closely surrounded by natural vegetation, is that local bird species thrive instead of failing. And a new study suggests that local plant diversity is also stronger. And as much as it is possible, this method allows the local soil to be rested, exracting fewer nutrients over the long term and keeping the soil healthier. So in the long run it ought to result in a healthier coffee plantation.

The problem of course is that in the short term you can make a bit more money by clearing those trees and planting more coffee.

But there is a better reason for all us coffee lovers. The kind of growers who care enough about the qualiity of their product to protect it for the long term future are also the coffee growers who care about the underlying quality of the coffee itself. In plain terms – they grow better coffee. So that should be a good enough reason to buy shade grown. Go to it…

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