Coffee, it turns out, can be a guilty pleasure ”¦ if the beans are grown in a clear-cut environment. Shadeless farming does not provide habitat for birds. Some coffees, realizing the eco-black eye such farming produces, now brand their brew as “shade grown.”
But, according to purveyors of Massachusetts-based Birds & Beans Coffee, now sold regionally and bearing a “Bird Friendly” stamp from the Smithsonian Institute, “shade grown” beans may account for less than one-third of the beans in the bag.
Bird & Beans has teamed up with the Orange County Audubon Society for the Birds & Beans expansion to a coffee pot near you. The society receives 5 percent of sales proceeds; another 10 percent of Birds & Beans proceeds go toward environmental research.
The Smithsonian”™s “Bird Friendly” certification means the coffee is grown in an environment that provides 92 percent of the habitat to birds as is provided by undisturbed rainforests. Many songbirds of North America winter among the coffee plantations of Central and South America, including the cedar waxwing ”“ one of the most beautiful songbirds and a denizen of this region ”“ which winters as far south as Panama.
The coffee is now sold in New York at Nature’s Pantry in Newburgh and Fishkill; Cornwall Community Co-op in Cornwall; Near & Natural Market and Westchester County Table Local Market, both in Bedford Hills; Otto’s Market in Columbia County; and Audubon Greenwich in Greenwich, Conn.
