I cannot claim to have Kenn Kaufman's experience in Central America, but I
can perhaps add a little to the current discussion of shade-grown coffee.
The point I want to make is that not all shade-grown coffees are alike and
some shade-grown coffees are definitely much more bird friendly than others.

Coffee is very sun-sensitive. Too little or too much sun reduces the yield.
There are four main forms of coffee culture in Central America: rustic (or
traditional), polyculture, monoculture, and sun. The four forms of culture
manage the sunlight sensitivity problem in different ways.

Rustic coffee culture is the method described in Kenn's post. The understory
of the forest is cleared out and coffee is planted under the tall trees.
This form of culture gives a park-like environment that is very pleasant to
work in.  Rustic culture mimics primary forest to a significant extent. In
my limited experience (seven days on eight fincas in Guatemala encompassing
all four types of culture), the basic diversity of bird species in rustic
culture is about as great as that of primary forest.

In polyculture coffee, many of the big trees are cut down as well as the
understory. In their place, fruit trees are planted not only to provide
shade but also to provide additional produce from the land. Bird diversity
in the polyculture plantations we visited is significantly lower than in
rustic plantations, but still provides a nice variety of bird life. Often,
one finds fincas where some tracts are in rustic culture and some are in
polyculture. These two techniques seem to coexist fairly well.

Monoculture shade coffee is grown in plantations where _all_ of the big
trees have been cleared and replaced by smaller, faster growing trees,
usually all of the same species (hence "monoculture"). These trees are
managed aggressively to provide precisely the right amount of shade. The
trees are removed and replaced when they grow to a certain size. The wood
produced by all this arboriculture is an important benefit to the workers on
the finca, for whom it is usually their sole fuel. The diversity of bird
life in these plantations is much, much lower than in either of the two
previous types of culture.

Sun-cultured coffee is grown in fields from which all native vegetation has
been stripped. Coffee is planted from fence row to fence row.  Sun
coffeeplantations are virtually devoid of birds. The effects of excess
sunlight
are managed by the application of chemicals. Sun coffee plantations are very
neat and susceptible to mechanized agriculture.  Sun coffee gives somewhat
higher yields, but demands heavy upfront expenditures for chemicals. This
has had the effect of changing coffee culture to a deficit-financed economy.
Growers must borrow money at the beginning of each season and hope the crop
is good enough to pay off the loans.

As usual, the issues are not as clear-cut as they seem at first. Strictly
speaking, supporting "shade coffee" does not necessarily contribute to
conservation of bird diversity in Mesoamerica. If it contributes to
converting rustic and polyculture plantations to monoculture coffee, the
effect is actually counterproductive to the stated aims. And that is the
general trend these days.  Traditional coffee growers are under heavy
pressure to shift to monoculture coffee culture to increase yields.

I am not a coffee drinker and have not researched whether the various
advertised "shade coffees" actually promote biodiversity.

Cheers,

Bob

--
Robert D Powell
Wilmington, OH, USA
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Nulla dies sine linea

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