Sips: Big companies, small packages

February 8, 2012

News from big roasters, about big plans, with some science and sustainability tossed in.

• Smucker, owner of Folgers, etc., has now purchased Sara Lee’s North American foodservice coffee business. Smucker can now buy even more uncertified coffee.
• And Oliver Strand points out in the NYT that Folgers in K-Cups costs $50 a pound!
• Meanwhile, Sara Lee realizes it neglected the single-serve market, and wants to re-invigorate its Senseo brand. It is already discontinuing marketing Senseo in North America at the end of March, so it looks like this will be a foreign effort.
• Coffee producers in India are asking the national coffee board  to provide subsidies for sustainable practices like pulpers that use less water and the preparation of worm composting beds.
• Meanwhile, Starbucks is set to begin opening stores galore in India. There was even a piece on NPR about it.
• And Starbucks is also moving forward in China, partnering to source Yunnan coffee for use in global blends.
• The NYT is also continuing its series Scientist at Work with an update from a researcher looking at mammals on Costa Rican coffee farms; this installment she talks about coffee certifications. Speaking of scientists at work, here’s me, representing.

And finally thanks, Minnesota Zoo, for the shout-out to Coffee & Conservation in your “Do One Thing” campaign.

Posted in Coffee news and miscellany,Corporate coffee

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Assessments of Starbucks CAFE Practices

February 3, 2012

Starbucks, through its partner Conservation International, has been assessing the impacts of its CAFE Practices coffee sourcing program. This has included a close look at participating farms and their compliance with the CAFE Practices criteria and their impacts on coffee-growing best practices. The publicly available reports provide an unusually-transparent opportunity to understand a major coffee company’s efforts in ethically and environmentally responsible coffee sourcing.

Recap: What is CAFE Practices?

Starbucks CAFÉ (Coffee and Farm Equity) Practices is the company’s green coffee sourcing program, started in 2004. The standards were were developed in partnership with Conservation International and an independent third-party company, Scientific Certification Systems (SCS). Points are awarded in four categories — product quality, economic accountability, social responsibility and environmental leadership — to producers that supply Starbucks coffee.  Certain criteria are mandatory for all suppliers. Reaching a certain point level confers preferred supplier status, a higher level is awarded strategic supplier status. These suppliers get enhanced pricing and contract terms.

Although CAFE Practices is a proprietary set of sourcing guidelines and not a certification per se, their criteria are available to the public, much like those of various coffee certifications (and unlike those of Nespresso’s proprietary AAA Sustainable Quality Program, which are a mystery).

Not only do the environmental criteria stack up favorably to some other actual coffee certifications, but Starbucks is on track to source all of its coffee under CAFE Practices by 2015; the 2010 amount was 84% of its coffee, or 103,000 tons.

Criteria met, now what?

Once certification/verification is awarded to a producer under any program, the data available to the public about the scheme is often along the lines of how many farms/hectares are certified, how much certified coffee is sold, and other general information. More in-depth results — most often on the economic benefits to farmers and communities — are typically restricted to academic studies that are often behind pay-walls and thus not readily available to the public.  We rarely have an idea of which particular criteria are being met by all/most/some farms, or if the certification is changing the way producers grow coffee.  No doubt this is largely due to the sheer logistics of making this information available. Tens of thousands of farms are inspected and evaluated throughout the year by dozens of approved contractors. Analyzing the audit reports, comparing them from year to year, making sense of the results…this task would be monumental and probably require a team of specialists, perhaps adding to the cost of certification. Starbucks is attempting to gather this material, and has been publishing reports on the results.

CAFE Practices assessment reports

Starbucks and Conservation International (CI) have been releasing reports assessing the CAFE Practices program to see how it is impacting best-practices at the producer level and how the program could be improved. The first report, Assessment of the Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices Program for FY08 (PDF) is 143 pages and was released in March 2011. It covered 2008, the first year farm-level data could be sufficiently collected and analyzed. Two 30+ page reports focused on producers in Guatemala (PDF) and Colombia (PDF).

Research, analysis, and reporting were performed by CI and, in the case of the regional reports, local partners. The reports follow a format similar to what is found in peer-reviewed scientific literature. Methods included analyzing farm verification reports submitted by approved third-party auditors (the “scorecards”), and (for the latter two reports) surveying both participating and non-participating farmers. The reports summarized information on participating farms, how farms (and mills) complied with various key social and environmental criteria, and made recommendations on how CAFE Practices might be improved. Results were broken down in various ways, including farm size and geographic area.

I saw a clear progression in the refinement of methodology and results reporting as these reports were produced. I was very impressed with the level of detail and consideration that went into developing the methods. The introductory material, and identification and description of local Important Bird Areas and priority flora and fauna in the two regional reports was accurate and demonstrated a level of understanding of biodiversity beyond the general concepts often bandied about by certification schemes. The quality of the most recent (Colombia) report was better than a lot of consulting, academic, and scientific reports I’ve read over the years.

What has Starbucks accomplished through CAFE Practices?

The sheer volume and detail of data in these reports is too much to go into here. Each report handled analysis a little differently, so it is hard to make general statements on many of the results. Here, I’d like to pull out some noteworthy facts, with an emphasis on environmental data. Overall data is for FY 2008 (the subject of the first report). Survey data from Guatemala is from 2009, Colombia from 2011. Note that CAFE Practices has slightly different criteria for small (<12 ha) farms than for medium (12-49 ha) and large (>50 ha) farms.

• There were 140,973 participating farms, of which 99% were under 12 ha in size. Half of all the coffee Starbucks purchased was from small farms.
• Participating farms had 102,281 ha designated as conservation areas; 99% of farms had not cleared any forest areas for coffee production in the previous three years.
• 57% of farms reported using pesticides only as a last resort. Countries with low compliance were Burundi, Panama, and Nicaragua. Countries with high compliance rates included Ethiopia and Peru.
• 51% of farms did not use synthetic fertilizers; most were small farms — only 8% of large farms did not use synthetic fertilizers. Only 128 medium and large farms were certified organic (it was unclear if this data is collected for small farms).
• 36% of farms used some shade throughout the production area, 56% used it on at least half.
• 78% of medium and large farms used shade at 40% or greater canopy cover (this is a level of shade that gives good canopy cover for birds without impacting yield too much). Countries with high levels of compliance here included Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. This criteria was not used to assess small farms.
• 63% of farms used native species for at least three-quarters of their shade cover.
• In Colombia and Guatemala, more farmers in the CAFE Practices program participated in other certifications compared to farmers not participating.
• In Colombia, more participants had natural habitat on their farms than non-participants. Size of natural areas was similar between groups.
• In Colombia, use of agrochemicals was common and similar between participants and non-participants; only 53% used protective gear for application (similar between the two groups).
• In Guatemala, participants were reducing their use of agrochemicals at higher rates than non-participants.

The assessment concluded that lower compliance in some areas meant that some criteria were not well understood, that farmers did not have the resources to improve their methods, and/or that the CAFE Practices criteria were insufficient to encourage or even evaluate some practices. Some recommendations included:

• Additional technical assistance to help farmers understand and implement chemical and disease control, and wildlife management. In particular, areas that required high levels of specialized expertise (for instance, in identifying species living on the farm and developing management plans for them) needed support.
• Additional indicators to assess the level of shade canopy cover on farms.
• Making forest clearing and highest-toxicity chemical use zero tolerance criteria.
• Improving the handling of agrochemicals in Colombia through training or changes in criteria.
• Addressing water quality issues in Guatemala and Colombia, since many participants who reporting having problems were not taking steps to remedy them.

It was also determined that certain questions needed to be added or clarified when surveying farmers to better assess particular conditions and resources. Based on the evolution of the reports, I expect those in the future will be more standardized and clearer, and I hope there will be some sort of easily digestible summary one day.

Conclusions

The compliance numbers for most eco-criteria seemed fairly strong to me, especially given the very high numbers and variety of participating farms. In general, most Starbucks suppliers seem to grow coffee in a fairly responsible manner compared to nearby non-participants in the sampled countries. The reports indicate a trend toward improved farm management among participants, in part because of their participation.

Most coffee certification criteria don’t span quite the diversity or record the level of data that are covered in CAFE Practices, nor have I seen similar analyses performed for other sets of standards. Thus, we don’t have anything to compare to these results.  The fact that CI, a partner in development of the criteria, identified weaknesses and areas that needed improvement struck me as very positive. While this component obviously should be included in this kind of assessment, it’s not something the public sees very often. Of course, it’s an invitation to for us to see how Starbucks acts on the recommendations, and I know I will be keeping my eyes open.

Starbucks’ goal with CAFE Practices is to drive long-term sustainability of their coffee supply through improvements in environmental conditions and socio-economic status of producers. This is a business decision on the part of Starbucks. While good stewardship of the earth may be part of it, the company doesn’t pretend it launched this initiative out of altruism. While other big coffee companies trumpet their empty sustainability claims, Starbucks releases these reports with a minimum of flag-waving and, from what I’ve seen, no attempt at greenwashing.

I think what Starbucks is doing with CAFE Practices is enormously important. They’ve shown that sustainability can be a good business decision and that ethical sourcing need not be achieved at the expense of profits. Rather than taking what may have been an easy road of obtaining coffee certified under less stringent conditions, they have made a serious effort to develop measurable standards to meet their needs, and committed to sourcing all their coffee under these guidelines.  They implemented tools to examine their effectiveness and impact, and have been surprisingly transparent in presenting the results to the public. Whether you like their coffee or not, Starbucks deserves a great deal of credit for their approach to coffee sourcing.

Starbucks cups courtesy of Starbucks Coffee; coffee cherry photo by Neil Palmer/CIAT under a Creative Commons license.

Posted in Certifications,Starbucks

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The curse of the spud

January 27, 2012

“Potato taint” in African coffees

Some East African coffees, especially those from Rwanda, but also Burundi, Tanzania, Zambia, and Kenya, are afflicted by the strong flavor of potato peels, not a desirable taste in coffee.  This defect is said to be ultimately caused by one of the pyrazine chemical compounds. How do coffee beans end up with this chemical? The prevailing theory is that coffee cherries are damaged by insects, most notably several species of stink bugs. The damage facilitates contamination of the cherry, which leads to formation of the potato taint compounds.

The connection between the bugs and the taint are not completely understood. Let’s take a super-geeky look at what we know about the bugs — which, whether they cause the potato defect or not, do a lot of damage to coffee cherries — and how they might be responsible for the potato taint.

Bugs that make a stink

The insects that cause damage to coffee cherries in East Africa that are usually associated with potato taint are in the order Hemiptera, the true bugs.  This order includes various bugs that suck plant juices, including cicadas, leafhoppers, aphids, scale insects, shield or stink bugs, and many others.  The stink bugs that are coffee pests are collectively called “Antestia bugs,” after their former generic name (many species in the genus Antestia have been reclassified under another genus, Antestiopsis). Two primary culprits are Antestiopsis orbitalis (formerly Antestia lineaticollis) and Antestiopsis intricata.

A. orbitalis (above right) is a colorful bug about 7 mm long. Various subspecies have slightly different patterns.  This and related species that also attack coffee have similar life histories; for the sake of simplicity I’ll refer to them collectively as variegated coffee bugs. Some species are found in India and southeast Asia. We’ll focus on the ones usually found in Africa.

Three variegated coffee bugs on coffee in Burundi. Photo by Tim Hill of Counter Culture Coffee.

Variegated coffee bugs can complete four generations a year, and reproduce best at temperatures between 19 and 24 degrees C (66-75 F) and humidity between 35-50%.  Eggs are laid on the undersides of leaves. The young are called nymphs, and are similar, but smaller, than the adults. Average life span is three to four months. Like all Hemipterans, variegated coffee bugs have piercing mouthparts adapted to sucking plant juices. Arabica coffee (rarely robusta) is the preferred host, but other plants in the coffee family (Rubiaceae) are also used. Variegated coffee bugs feed on shoots and leaves (causing damage and bud drop) but primarily on unripe coffee cherries.

Not only does this type of feeding itself cause physical damage to the cherry, but fungi (yeast) in the genus Nematospora (N. [=Eremothecium] coryli and N. [=Ashbya] gossypii) can secondarily infect the cherry. Nematospora fungi are not specific to coffee, but when these two species infect coffee, it’s usually called coffee bean rot. The fungi only cause rot in unripe (green) cherries.

It’s believed that the bugs are vectors of the fungi;  that is,the bugs carry the spores and the fungi are dependent on the bugs (though not variegated coffee bugs exclusively) for dispersal. There is some dispute over whether the spores are present internally in the bugs and thus inoculated into plants, or if they are present on the surface of the bugs. Not all cherries pierced by the bugs become infected. It could be that the fungal spores are not present in/on all bugs, or that if they are present internally, they may be too large to pass through the mouthparts of younger (smaller) individuals.

Physical damage to the coffee cherry and the associated rot cause significant losses (up to 45%) on coffee farms infested with variegated coffee bugs. Do these bugs also cause potato taint?

Chemicals that make a stink

A number of chemical compounds produce potato-like odors. The most notable is a methoxypyrazine: 2-methoxy 3-isopropylpyrazine (or “MIPP”*). The odor threshold of MIPP is very low, so it’s easily detected in very small quantities. MIPP has been found in nature in some plants and higher organisms. Various pyrazines can be synthesized chemically and biologically, and MIPP has been produced by cultures of at least one bacteria, Pseudomonas perolens.

Other Pseudomonas cultures also have potato odors. This group of bacteria are free-living, and widely found in soil and water (at least one strain infects the leaves of coffee trees). Several other bacteria, such as some strains of Serratia and Cedecea, produce potato-like odors that are the result of a combination of pyrazine compounds.

Despite my access to vast quantities of scientific literature, I was surprised to find virtually no published research on the chemical processes of coffee bean rot. Does it produce MIPP or a similar compound with a potato odor? If other bacteria are involved in the potato defect, are they connected in some way to the fungal infection that is typically introduced by variegated coffee bugs? Where to the bacteria come from?

One very interesting clue comes from Tim Hill, of Counter Culture Coffee, who provided the photo above left. He said that the potato odor was apparent in the air during a rainstorm in Burundi. This is suggestive that a/the taint-producing bacteria may be present in the soil. While I have been unable to pin down the range of Pseudomonas perolens, there are nearly 200 species of this bacteria worldwide. I have to wonder why the potato defect is largely (exclusively?) considered an East African problem and why it has been historically linked to variegated potato bugs, but not, for instance, coffee berry borers which also penetrate the green cherry. The borers and Pseudomonas are fairly ubiquitous in  coffee-growing nations. It seems to me that there must be a link between the variegated coffee bugs and a bacteria that facilitate the production of stinky pyrazine compounds.

Bringing us to this compelling clue: MIPP (usually going by its synonym IPMP*), is found in some grapes and contributes to pleasant flavors in wines in small amounts, but at higher levels is associated with the off-flavor known as “ladybug taint.”  The ladybugs (Asian multicolored lady beetles, Harmonia axyridis, the non-native species that can be a household pest) do not actually attack or harm the grapes. IPMP is part of the chemical make-up of the ladybugs, and when the insects get mixed in and processed with the grapes, the taint occurs in the wine.

IPMP is present in lots of ladybug species, and many other insects that are “aposematic” — those possessing some kind of warning signal to potential predators. Usually, this is some sort of bright coloration, very often red and black. I have not seen any variegated coffee bugs or close relatives on lists of insects that have been confirmed to have any pyrazines, but their colorful patterns are consistent with other aposematic insects, and some other Hemiptera are classified as aposematic. Recall this group of bugs is known as “stink bugs.”  This is precisely because most have the ability to release a nasty chemical when molested. So further exploration of the chemical make-up of variegated stink bugs surely seems a promising avenue of research.

However these compounds end up in the coffee cherry, they end up altering the bean, which itself does not show damage. (This fact — that the damaged cherries must be identified and discarded prior to processing, after which they cannot be detected until the coffee is roasted or ground — is what makes this defect so frustrating.)

Recent news out of the University of California, Riverside announced that one of their entomologists was going to Rwanda to help solve the mystery of the potato defect. That item said, “there is no definitive link between potato taste and antestia bug, only hypotheses.” While the research I’ve cited (see below) is not very current, the dots seem to be connected right up to the end point of why and how MIPP or a similar compound is produced.

The battle of the bug

Given the fact that one way or another, variegated coffee bugs are pests of coffee, control methods for them will continue to be important. Fungicides do not control the type of infection caused by Nematospora, given that the fungi are introduced within the coffee cherry. Small infestations of the bugs can been battled with hand-picking. Since the bugs like dense foliage, pruning is often recommended. In the long run, both natural and synthetic pyrethrum insecticides have proven ineffective in many cases. The bugs have typically been controlled with multiple applications of pesticides, usually fenitrothion, chlorpyrifos, malathion, trichlorfon, and diflubenzuron. All but the last are organophosphate pesticides that are especially dangerous (to humans and the environment) when not applied according to instructions with full protection, which is often not the case in less-developed nations.

Fortunately, because they are native to East Africa, variegated coffee bugs do have many natural enemies which may be exploited for biocontrol; they are especially vulnerable to a number of native parasitic wasps that attack the eggs. With persistence and luck, reliable biological and cultural control of variegated coffee bugs will hopefully be developed.

As the Rwandan and Burundian specialty coffee sectors grow, the urgency to defeat the potato taint will grow. I’ll be following any progress and research on the exact mechanisms of potato taint and any methods of control and detection that emerge.

Photo of Antestiopsis orbitalis by Lambert Smith, used with permission.

*This compound has several synonyms: 2-Isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine, 3-Isopropyl-2-methoxypyrazine, or IPMP. The CAS Registry number is 25773-40-4.

Further reading:

Coffeed forum thread, “The Rwandan Potato problem,” June 2007.

James Hoffman, “The Phantom Potato,” February 2009 blog post. This post and the comments, and the forum post above talk about potato taint from the barista/consumer perspective in particular.  Below, is some of the primary academic and scientific literature.

• Cheng, T.-B., G. A. Reineccius, J. A. Bjorklund, and E. Leete. 1991. Biosynthesis of 2-methoxy-3-isopropylpyrazine in Pseudomonas perolens. J. Agric. Food Chem. 39:1009-1012.
• Cilas, C., B. Bouyjou, and B. Decazy. 1998. Frequency and distribution of Antestiopsis orbitalis Westwood (Hem., Pentatomidae) in coffee plantations in Burundi: implications for sampling techniques. Journal of Applied Entomology. 122:601-606.
• Crowe, T.J., G.D.G. Jones, and R. Williamson. 1961. The use of pyrethrum formulations to control Antestiopsis on coffee in East Africa. Bulletin of Entomological Research. 52:31-41.
• Greathead, D.J. 1966. A taxonomic study of the species of Antestiopsis (Hemipteea, Pentatomidae) associated with Coffea arabica in Africa. Bulletin of Entomological Research. 56:515-554.
• Kirkpatrick, T. W. 1937. Studies on the ecology of coffee plantations in East Africa. Ii. the autecology of Antestia Spp. (pentatomidae) with a particular account of a Strepsipterous parasite. Transactions of the Royal Entomological Society of London 86:247-343.
• Le Pelley, R.H. 1932. On the control of Antestia Lineaticollis, Stål (Hem., Pentatom.) on Coffee in Kenya Colony. 1932. Bulletin of Entomological Research. 23:217-228.
• Le Pelley, R.H. 1942. The food and feeding habits of Antestia in Kenya. Bulletin of Entomological Research. 33:71-89.
• McNutt, D.N. 1979. Control of Antestiopsis spp. on coffee in Uganda. Tropical Pest Management. 25:5-15.
• Mehrotra, R. S., and Aggarwhal, A. 2003. Plant Pathology, 2nd Ed. Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi.
• van der Meulen, H.J., and A.S. Schoeman. 1990. Aspects of the phenology and ecology of the antestia stink bug, Antestiopsis orbitalis orbitalis (Hemiptera: Pentatomidae), a pest of coffee. Phytophylactica. 22:423-426.
• Mitchell, P.L. 2004. Heteroptera as vectors of plant pathogens. Neotropical Entomology. 33:519-545.
• Nixon, G.E.J. 1941. New Braconid parasites of Antestia Lineaticollis, Stål, and of Sylepta Derogata, F. Bulletin of Entomological Research. 32:93-101.
• Pickering, G. J, M. Spink, Y. Kotseridis, D. Inglis, I. D. Brindle, M. Sears, and A. Beh. 2008. Yeast strain affects 3-isopropyl-2-methoxypyrazine concentration and sensory profile in Cabernet Sauvignon wine. Australian Journal of Grape and Wine Research. 14:230-237.

 

Posted in Coffee regions,Research on coffee growing

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Site updates

January 25, 2012

I’ve recently done some tweaks and improvements of the foundation and background information on the site:

• I’ve updated some of the important primary background posts: What is shade-grown coffee?, The problems with sun coffee, and Birds and coffee plantations.
• I’ve updated the post on where to get Smithsonian Bird-Friendly certified coffee.
• I’ve streamlined the User Guide page, which lists the nuts and bolts posts that provide an overview on what you need to know about sustainable coffee.
• I’ve made many additions to the list of peer-reviewed literature on sustainable coffee issues. While I review some research articles here, the bibliography lists many more that are published on coffee pests and diseases, shade management, biodiversity on coffee farms, the economics of various certifications, climate change and coffee, and related topics. You can always access it via the “References” tab at the top of the page. If you have a paper you are especially interested in that you can’t access without an academic account, write to me and I can probably get you a copy.

Posted in Housekeeping

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