M.S. Research Paper by Jennifer McLean
University of Maryland, December 1997

I. Introduction

Bird-friendly or shade coffee is a much more recent development than either the Fair Trade movement (2) in Europe or organic certification (Europe and the US), both well-established niche-markets for specialty coffee that have evolved separately and are quite differently motivated. Nevertheless, people attracted to specialty coffee for the first time because of the attention around bird-friendly coffee are discovering that buying shade coffee also means supporting small, independent farmers or farmer collectives. Growing coffee under tree cover rather than in large-scale open plantations has been the way for the less prosperous (or more self-reliant) farmers to lessen their economic risk. This is not news in Europe, where �Fair Trade� organizations have been buying directly from small farmers since 1973. Fair Trade coffee accounts for roughly 4% of the market in Europe and is increasing its market share.

Thus, either because of chance developments in the two markets or ingrained cultural values, American and European consumers have different reasons for buying small-holder coffee. These different sets of values - better health (3) for Americans and for Europeans a sense of charity or activism- seem to be served by buying the same product. In the new context of shade coffee, Organic Coffee and Fair Trade, appear to be operating on common ground ; when in reality the two movements have evolved quite separately. The two sets of criteria share a connection in shade but neither one of them is dependent on it. While shade/smallholder coffee has always existed alongside the full sun plantations, it is not until recently that shade has made an appearance as a selling point in the coffee market. American specialty coffee consumers had previously made their choices based on regional preferences (approaching an �appellation� system similar to wine) or desire for organically grown produce. The small farmers targeted by Fair Trade often do grow coffee under tree cover and organic production often does incorporate tree cover but neither one of these systems require shade as a criterion and the two do not in fact share common conceptual ground (see Section IV).

Neither Fair Trade nor Organic certifications are based on principles of ecosystem health. In each case and to varying degrees conservation of biodiversity and preservation of ecosystem health are welcome but tenuous byproducts of the certification requirements. Bird Friendly or Shade coffee comes closest to full ecological criteria but ultimately sells because of the appeal of songbirds to North Americans. That many other taxa and ecosystem functions are conserved along with bird habitat is a fortuitous consequence but not the primary selling point on which the certification system is based.

Treating Organic and shade coffee together as interchangeable criteria for ecological health is not correct since the Organic criteria concern product quality and consumer health and have only recently broadened to include land stewardship. A completely deforested field where a monoculture crop is grown can be perfectly 'organic' in the eyes of the major organic certifications. (see Section III). It is true that organic farmers tend to intercrop, control erosion with hedgerows and other buffers, or use tree cover for shade-tolerant crops but these measures are employed to increase productivity and not explicitly for conservation. For example, in some mountain areas of Costa Rica where the cloud cover is adequate shade for the older, sun-intolerant varieties, low-input coffee is grown in the open. Similarly, forested or low-input coffee production is often correlated with smallholder production but is not a stipulated criterion of Fair Trade. The movement began with principles of fixed price and cutting out middle brokers and only later incorporated ecological or land stewardship criteria into its body of standards.

American consumers are only beginning to become aware of the plethora of standards, certifications, and seals applied to all sorts of products from every place in the world. A product may be certified for its content, e.g., Woolmark, Certified Organic, 100% Recycled, or for the conditions surrounding its production, e.g., Union Label, Rugmark, Dolphin-Safe Tuna. Each certification system has its own sets of principles, its own goals, its own membership it serves, its own methods for verifying and promoting the claims it makes. Some are highly organized international bodies, others are non-profits that evolve in membership and scope, others narrowly defined partnerships for single commodities.

Do the seals we see on the finished goods really mean that a forest or agricultural product was harvested in a sustainable way? that basic human rights were respected or that social progress was made? Would it be better to standardize this confusion of marks and seals under national or international standards? The two main viewpoints on this question are 1) that in the interests of verity and reliability, private seals should be regulated under governmental or international systems, and, 2) on the contrary, freedom of expression (since these sets of standards often represent political standpoints) and freedom of experimentation (since we don�t know what works best) must be preserved by allowing the marketplace to operate freely. A third viewpoint might be that certification is only decorative and whether it is under institutional control or not, it is only inventing purpose for businesses in developed countries and taking away resources from more effective measures for conservation and development.

The complex and rapidly evolving situation of certified coffee is worth observing as an important test of the potential of green markets to promote conservation and sustainable development. To what degree can consumer activism, through product certification, save habitat and improve peoples livelihoods? The utility of timber certification has been investigated in recent years. While there is some connection between timber certification and coffee, coffee is fundamentally different than timber and non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in many respects. How does one characterize coffee?

Coffee is definitely agricultural - but it has nothing to do with food. It�s a mild and socially acceptable stimulant (the developed world�s other �fuel�). Coffee is agroforestry, where it is grown in garden settings, but it is not limited to this production mode. There are innumerable forms and scales of production - ranging from small plots in the multi-storied forest gardens of indigenous peoples to fully technified coffee monoculture. High-input coffee is the second most chemically intensive crop (after cotton) and it is the second largest exported commodity in the world (after oil) (World Bank 97). The world coffee market and national associations are still largely based on sector and class relationships that date from colonial times, exacerbated by large-scale macro-economic shifts and an increasingly time-sensitive futures market. Despite having all the complexities of the global economy, coffee is mysteriously aloof from the wrangle over free trade negotiations. The coffee market produced the longest-surviving commodity agreement, the International Coffee Agreement (ICA). Coffee appears to be its own world, operating with its own rules (4). It is surprising that such a huge sector has escaped attention on its ecological implications for so long. An estimated 11 million hectares of the species-rich tropics are under coffee cultivation (Katzeff 96). It accounts for a quarter or more of the GDP for a dozen developing nations (Lucier 88). As many as 20 million people around the world depend on raw coffee production for a living (New Internationalist). The fields of conservation and development can no longer afford to ignore coffee.

I became interested in this topic after attending the First Sustainable Coffee Congress, hosted by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (SMBC) in September 1996. It was hoped that this first meeting of coffee roasters with conservationists and coffee growers from Latin America would in fact be a Congress and produce a set of agreed principles. However, the attendees were too diverse in their interests to be expected to come to agreement on the definition of sustainable coffee, let alone principles on which to build criteria for certification. The coffee growers present represented diverse scales of production and economic classes and had various economic and political agendas, the academics and conservationists were almost entirely from the United States and focussed on bird conservation, and the coffee roasters repeatedly warned that although they welcomed organized social and environmental progress in their industry their priority had to be a dependable supply of high-quality coffee - without which their small hold on the market would slip, shade or no shade.

A concern that was voiced repeatedly at the conference was that consumers did not need to be confused with yet another body of certification, that this might be damaging both to the specialty coffee industry and the conservation movement. However, retailers, shop owners and coffee drinkers themselves were not present in any organized fashion at the Congress and their opinions not voiced at the conference. The director of the SMBC, a noted ornithologist, maintained that the birding population was a sizable, money-wielding, educated and conservation-minded sector of the coffee market that would welcome further progress in certification. Representatives of the Fair Trade system pushed for a kind of autonomous plurality in certification, while the Organic Crop Improvement Association maintained that shade could be easily incorporated into the existing organic criteria.

Thus, before sustainable coffee could even be defined and important distinctions resolved such as whether to include farms under conversion to organic, low-input farms, water vs sun processing, and how to categorize shade, the question remained whether it was better to unite for a new, 'sustainable coffee' certification or preserve the independence of the existing certifications. Despite this uncertainty a great deal of information was shared and, even more importantly, this single conference sparked immediate and wide interest in shade coffee and small farmers. In the months following the publicizing of the conference, the term �shade coffee� appeared for the first time in hundreds of web sites, nearly all of them citing the SMBC conference. Another outcome was the SMBC's attempt to secure their own certification seal for coffee. They succeeded in November 1997 in endorsing an organic brand as �bird-friendly�. More than a year after the Congress, the sustainable coffee issue is still alive; it will most likely be taken up again in April of 1998 as part of the annual meeting of the Specialty Coffee Association.

On the heels of the initial gains and setbacks of certified timber and non-timber forest products, coffee is the next major test of the potential of informed consumer activism to reshape mainstream markets. Certified coffee has already begun to set the tone for other large agricultural sectors in the tropics, such as bananas and citrus fruit (see Rainforest Alliance�s ECO-OK certification). If certification turns out to be more than a fashion to be tested by the North on the South it will eventually come to bear on the agricultural sectors of the developed world, just as, for example, the SmartWood program for tropical timber has started certifying timber production in the US. The political and logistical obstacles that Organic coffee and Fair Trade certifiers have overcome and others that are still being met could decide how and whether the agricultural industry will be reformed worldwide, including agriculture in the US. Social and ecological criteria for certification presently operate separately in the form of Organic certification and Fair Trade. Each of these sets of criteria cannot address sustainable development without first setting down root principles of land stewardship and land tenure. A concrete and feasible expression of the principles of sustainable development in the coffee sector could set a precedent for agriculture worldwide. If it can be done with coffee - a worldwide commodity fraught with international trade politics - it will be possible for other major sectors and will set the stage for future debates on sustainable agriculture and land tenure reform. On the other hand, if a new set of criteria for coffee is found to be impossible in the foreseeable future, this will teach us lessons about the limits of information and consumer activism to bring about conservation and justice.

This paper is written under the assumption that consumers can decide for themselves when they have heard too much debate or when they are too confused by the plurality of approaches. That the present situation of coffee certification is complicated and difficult to navigate through is not a sufficient reason to decide against a new direction. Two questions are worth asking: 1. Are the two main bodies of certification sufficient to make coffee a force for social progress and nature conservation? 2. If not, is it possible to build a new system of certification? or 3. Take the emphasis off certification in favour of a different approach? To make a first attempt at recommending a direction, I have synthesized the historical context of coffee in Latin America (where certification is most active), drawing attention to pitfalls of popular or promoted images of coffee. The various actors in the coffee world are introduced, governments, professional coalitions, nonprofits, and producer collectives, with specific reference to their roles in shaping certification. With this background in mind, the two main systems of certification that presently operate in coffee, Organic and Fair Trade, will be critically reviewed to assess their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, a new system of certification, one that is necessarily political, will be proposed The groundwork needed to test the proposal will be outlined.

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