Clipmarks | BirdBarista's clips

Birds defend against coffee borers

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:51:34 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: I've seen this research presented at meetings, and will be writing about it in a future "Know your coffee birds" post

Clip Source: news.nationalgeographic.com

Millions of dollars have funded research to eradicate the coffee berry borer, and for decades, coffee farmers the world over have been battling the pest using every weapon they can muster, from traps to insecticide and even other insects—all with limited success.

But a simple solution may already exist in their own backyards: birds.

"By eating the pests that damage coffee crops, birds can provide a valuable service to coffee farmers," said ecologist Matthew Johnson. He's measured birds' protective effects on coffee plants in Jamaica—and concluded that farmers can reap more protection simply by providing the birds a friendlier environment.

When foraging birds were free to visit coffee plants, there was up to 14 percent less borer infestation than in plants that were caged off from the birds.

The researchers also found that berry damage was cut nearly in half, providing a significant boost in coffee yields and farm income.

Climate change moving up Peru coffee harvest time

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 10:44:06 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: www.canada.com

Traditionally, Peruvian coffee growers start picking their crop in April, some six months before the global arabica harvest. Its flip season has given Peru, the world's sixth largest exporter of coffee, a unique comparative advantage.

If the season continues to move earlier, farmers worry they could lose their privileged position.

While climate change might make new land available to farm coffee, it could also expose the crop to unusual precipitation and atypical levels of humidity. Peruvian growers have said the scarcity of rains this year in some coffee-producing areas is the result of rising global temperatures.

Climate change has also been blamed for last year's drought in Brazil and winds in Guatemala. Both slashed coffee yields.

farmers in the group are aware of climate change and some are working to limit their environmental impact - by planting shade-grown coffee, using natural fertilizers and not clear-cutting farms.

Gates Foundation to help Ethiopian, Kenyan farmers improve quality

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 12:04:16 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: www.ethiopianreview.com

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has embarked on a multi-million shilling East African Coffee Initiative Project that will see thousands of farmers acquire modern skills aimed at increasing their production and income.

Select farmers from Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia have been incorporated in the project which will among other things train them on modern coffee husbandry and link them with international coffee dealers who are going for specialty coffee.

TechnoServe will provide technical assistance to the farmers and their respective societies’ management committees in agronomy and primary processing to improve coffee quality and yields.

At the end of the four-year project period, farmers affiliated to more than 100 societies across the country will have benefited from the programme.

10 Reasons coffee doesn't taste like the bag descriptions

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 12:05:13 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: Great list -- each item has a short explanation of how they impact the taste of coffee.

Hat tip to Bloggle for pointing out this post.

Clip Source: www.barismo.com

10. Water

9. Grind

8. Brew time

7. Temperature

6. Crop variance

5. Weather

4. Roaster error

3. Brew method

2. Age

1. Personal palette

Illegal geisha coffee discovered in Panamanian national park

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 01:37:15 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: I've been to this beautiful park, and certainly hope this encroachment is nipped in the bud.

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Last month, Panama's Environmental Protection Agency discovered 40 acres of clandestine coffee trees nestled deep in the Volcan Baru National Park, sparking fears that more forest could be cleared as prices rise.

The nature preserve is ringed with coffee farms growing the country's "geisha" beans

Now, sky-high prices for geisha beans have lured some growers well inside the park's boundaries.

Established growers in the region have built up reputations for running environmentally and socially responsible farms.

The Esmeralda Estate, run by Daniel Peterson, has coffee that consistently wins the highest auction prices, while being certified by the conservation group Rainforest Alliance as environmentally friendly.

Peterson says high-altitude land is becoming scarcer in traditional centers of geisha production, but expansion does not have to affect the national park.

Climate change endangers Ugandan coffee

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 02:41:26 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: I wrote a piece about climate change and coffee, including before-and-after maps of Uganda, in 2006. Read it here: http://tinyurl.com/6cgrd8

Clip Source: africa.reuters.com

KAMPALA (Reuters) - Changing weather patterns in Uganda may lead to the extinction of the east African country's key export, coffee, in coming decades, a report by British charity Oxfam said on Thursday.

"The outlook is bleak. If the average global temperatures rise by two degrees or more, then most of Uganda is likely to cease to be suitable for coffee..this may happen in 40 years or perhaps as little as 30," the report said.

Why commodity traders have had such an influence on the coffee market

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:11:21 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: A lot of the volitility and high market prices this year has been due to speculative futures trading. I had wondered why this was so influencial this year, and this article summarizes another piece in the trade press on how these markets have changed and why the market price of coffee has a lot to do with folks who have nothing to do with coffee.

The original PDF is at
http://www.coffeetalk.com/images/CTJun08web.pdf

(BTW, I believe this applies to oil prices as well.)

Clip Source: beanactivist.wordpress.com

This year, the world coffee market saw more volatility than in years past due to increased speculation by a new wave of traders.

Commodity speculation (including coffee) in the United States changed fundamentally . . due to a rather obscure piece of legislation written by Republican Senator Phil Gramm that substantially relaxed, and in many cases eliminated completey, federal regulation of futures trading in American commodity markets.

Couple this with last year’s purchase of the New York Board of Trade (NYBOT which housed the arabica coffee trading system in addition to cotton, sugar and other commodities) by the Intercontinental Commodities Exchange (ICE), a British electronic energy marketplace.

The sale of NYBOT to the ICE made it even easier for non-commercial investors to get in - in a big way - on the commodities futures action

All about using coffee grounds as compost

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:26:00 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: Great info in this article from ScienceDaily.

Clip Source: www.sciencedaily.com

Coffee grounds can be an excellent addition to a compost pile. The grounds are relatively rich in nitrogen, providing bacteria the energy they need to turn organic matter into compost.

Contrary to popular belief, coffee grounds are not acidic

Here are some suggestions for using composted grounds

Mix grounds into soil as an amendment.

Spread grounds on the soil surface, then cover them with leaves or bark mulch.

Add grounds to your compost pile,

Paper coffee filters may be composted with the grounds.

coffee grounds help to sustain high temperatures in compost piles. High temperatures reduce potentially dangerous pathogens and kill seeds from weeds and vegetables that were added to the piles. They have noticed that coffee grounds seem to improve soil structure, plus attract earthworms.

Brazil's 25-year-old coffee stocks dwindling

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:56:34 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: Don't drink the coffee in Brazil unless you know where it comes from!

Clip Source: www.guardian.co.uk

VARGINHA, Brazil, July 7 (Reuters) - Brazil's government should sell out within a year hundreds of thousands of bags of coffee harvested as long ago as 1982 and warehoused during a bygone era when the state bought supplies to keep prices firm.

Government agronomist Antonio Ernesto said the IBC had amassed 17 million to 18 million bags of coffee by the time President Fernando Collor's government did away with the Institute in 1990. Around 718,000 of those 60-kg bags remain.

"This coffee is now used more on the local market ... After more than four years coffee loses its taste," he said, adding it was used to blend with other coffees.

The warehouse in Varginha looked spartan and clean-swept. Cobwebs cast just a thin veil over some sacks, but these serve a purpose, Ernesto said, helping keep bugs away from the stocks on which the use of pesticides is prohibited.

"Cobwebs provided a defense against insects. It was biological (pest) control," he said.

More land preserved near Colombia's Cerulean Warbler reserve

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:09:34 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: www.abcbirds.org

American Bird Conservancy’s Colombian partner, Fundación ProAves, has purchased 2,861 acres of land to create the Reserva Natural Pauxi pauxi. The new reserve is named after the scientific name of the threatened Helmeted Curassow, and is located nine miles northwest of the existing Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve, in Cerro de la Paz, Santander Department.

Importantly, in addition to large numbers of Cerulean Warblers and at least 24 other species of migrants, the two reserves are remarkably rich in Neotropical resident species.

ProAves has just purchased two new properties to expand the Pauxi pauxi Reserve by a further 246 acres, and is also working with landowners to create a “Cerulean Warbler Conservation Corridor” between the reserves. Conservation easements with the land owners are being drawn up to manage their lands in a bird-friendly way, such as through maintenance of existing tracts of forest and keeping coffee and cacao in shade.

Kenyan coffee farms disappearing for housing tracts

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:00:53 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: www.bdafrica.com

While in traditional coffee growing zones farmers have left the farms to grow into bushes and threatened to uproot them, a new attack is emerging menacingly. This time, it is the growing appetite for real estate.

Thousands of acres of prime land under coffee are slowly disappearing as demand for high-end housing in peri-urban areas increases.

Areas most affected by the development are those surrounding major towns such as Nairobi, Kiambu, Thika and Nyeri, which are known for their lush coffee estates.

“The returns you can get from a hectare of coffee as compared to real estate are smaller. Coffee also takes a lot of time for one to realise returns,” said Mr Muchomba.

He adds that the survival of the coffee estates now depends a lot on the kind of incentives that the coffee sector receives to improve its competitiveness against other sectors.

Tropical biodiversity on "a trajectory toward disaster"

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 13:44:27 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: Corey JA Bradshaw, Navjot S Sodhi, and Barry W Brook (2008). Tropical turmoil: a biodiversity tragedy in progress. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 2009: 7, doi:10.1890/070193

Clip Source: news.mongabay.com

Bradshaw and colleagues note that while more than 60 percent of known biodiversity is found in the tropics, these regions face an onslaught of threats, including high population growth, poverty, poor governance and corruption, and "unprecedented" rates of habitat loss. Degradation and destruction of these ecosystems not only put biodiversity at risk but threatens human well-being.

Market hunting is leaving some forests "empty" of key seed dispersers.

"The majority of the world's population live in the tropics and what is at stake is the survival of species that pollinate most of the world's food crops, purify our water systems, attenuate severe flood risk, sequester carbon... and modify climate."

Bradshaw and colleagues argue that valuing ecosystems for the services they provide will be a critical step to protecting them for the benefit of future generations.

Global warming moves coffee upslope in Costa Rica

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:05:46 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: uk.reuters.com

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (Reuters) - Costa Rican coffee farmers are facing threats from climate change but the rising temperatures are also expanding high-altitude regions where the country's most prized beans are grown.

In Costa Rica, the temperature increases may help transform mountainous land that was once too chilly for delicate coffee trees into prime coffee-planting territory.

"We can now plant at 2,000 meters (6,562 feet). We didn't plant there before," said Daniel Urena, an agronomist for the Coopedota coffee cooperative, which sells its high-altitude coffee to buyers such as Starbucks Corp.

But while farmers in Costa Rica's highlands maybe able to develop into new areas, climate change could bring blight to the crop with unseasonable dry spells, unusual cold snaps and more difficulties growing coffee at lower elevations. Continued...

New bird species discovered near Cerulean Warbler Reserve

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 14:55:01 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista
clipper's remarks: I've written a lot about the Cerulean Warbler and its reliance on shade coffee farms in Colombia, and the Reserve (check the Bird category: http://www.coffeehabitat.com/birds/index.html) This is another example of how important these coffee-growing areas are to all types of birds.

Clip Source: www.proaves.org

A new bird has been discovered by a ProAves expedition in Serranía de los Yariguíes mountains, near ProAves’ Cerulean Warbler Bird Reserve in Colombia. It is a subspecies of the Pale-bellied Tapaculo called Scytalopus griseicollis gilesi and named after Robert Giles.

This new subspecies of Pale-bellied Tapaculo is the third new taxon to be described from recent explorations of the Yariguíes mountains of Colombia. It follows the Yariguíes Brush-Finch Atlapetes latinuchus yariguierum and the butterfly Idioneurula donegani. Several other new taxa discovered in these expeditions await still description due to the lengthy processes for review and publication.

"This and other discoveries from our expeditions show the Yariguíes mountains to be a previously unknown centre of endemism” commented Thomas Donegan, “It is important to conserve the habitats of this region to protect the populations of this species and subspecies which, like this Tapaculo, are found nowhere else in the world."

Growth of Rainforest Alliance

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 11:33:54 GMT

clipped by: BirdBarista

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Rainforest Alliance has nearly doubled the amount of coffee sold every year from its program that certifies coffee

New York-based Rainforest Alliance, an international nonprofit conservation group, certifies farms that meet specific criteria aimed to produce what it calls "sustainable" agricultural products. The process is designed to benefit the environment, farmers and their communities.

Coffee purchases from Rainforest certified farms has grown by an average of 93 percent annually since 2003, when the figure sat at 7 million lbs. In 2007, 91.3 million pounds of certified coffee were bought, Rainforest Alliance said.

Clip Source: www.reuters.com

Minneapolis-based Caribou Coffee purchases more than 60 percent of its coffee from Rainforest farms, exceeding the company's 50 percent goal for 2008, said Chad Trewick, Caribou's senior director of coffee and tea.