What Is Bird Friendly Coffee?
Bird Friendly Coffee is Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) certified and represents a gold standard in ethical and sustainable coffee business.
Bird Friendly Coffee is coffee that comes from family farms in Latin America that provide good, forest-like habitat for birds. Rather than being grown on farms that have been cleared of vegetation, Bird Friendly coffees are planted under a canopy of trees. These trees provide the shelter, food and homes migratory and local birds need to survive.
Ours is the only US company that solely sells triple-certified Smithsonian Bird Friendly, USDA Organic, and Fair Trade coffee from a B-Certified Roaster.
Bird friendly coffees are guaranteed to support bird habitat. Bird friendly coffees are also grown without pesticides, it also is shade grown under a canopy of trees that provides quality habitat for a variety of birds. Most coffee sold is sun-grown and sun makes coffee grown faster and produce more coffee. This makes loss of tropical biodiversity and harms resident birds.
Bird-Friendly coffee farming practices necessarily have lower yields because other plants, which are providing theshade for the coffee and habitat for songbirds, take up space.
Buy the best coffee online from a bird-friendly coffee destination. Birds & Beans offers the best coffee in USA produced from 100% organic certified farms. Get to know more about the best bird-friendly coffee vendor in the US.
The Center for Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education in Costa Rica (CATIE) estimates that at least 10% of organic coffee farmers have gone back to conventional production. The article goes on to state that the high prices that had been associated with organic coffee are diminishing and many farmers are being forced to sell their organic beans in the conventional market.In Chiapas, Mexico, farmers associated with our partner ICSUR experienced this firsthand when a buyer canceled two large contracts and farmers were forced to sell their coffee in local markets. Many families sustained a heavy loss (
According to the article, farmers using chemical fertilizers and pesticides harvest about 485 pounds of coffee out of one acre, versus 285 pounds per acre on an organic farm. If they cannot justify the cost, they are forced to return to conventional methods.The impact is heavy in many communities. Given a lack of education on proper usage, local water sources are frequently contaminated with chemicals, much of the land is rendered sterile from overuse, and families are frequently exposed to toxic chemicals.Families working with our partner ICSUR have incorporated edible mushroom production and chicken-raising efforts to diversify their income and lessen their dependence on income from coffee. With economic diversity, many of these families can continue their organic farming and weather the finicky markets.
Coffee Kids partners, the Association for Research and Training of Southern Mexico (ICSUR) in Chiapas and FomCafé in Oaxaca are working in rural coffee-growing communities to build capacity and reduce reliance on the annual coffee crop, which does not provide enough income for families. Many of their efforts are also helping families deal with the food crisis.Women and men working with ICSUR in Chiapas are learning to raise and sell mushrooms and chickens to diversify their income and bolster family diets. Women working with FomCafé are learning about organic gardening, cultivating food for their families and selling the surplus locally.“Many of the women commented that thanks to these projects they have access to fresh, organic foods for their families, something they couldn’t afford otherwise,” Zárate said. “The same is happening with the women working with ICSUR in Chiapas. Without these productive projects, it would be difficult to afford meat or eggs.”While food security is the major issue families in Mexico are confronting, ICSUR and FomCafé also promote projects in health care, education and economic diversification.Check out photos from our latest visit on our