Sustainable Solutions:

Integrated Open Canopy Coffee Production

To reduce the habitat degradation and destruction associated with coffee production we have developed a system in which farmers cultivate coffee in small (≈2-3 ha) lightly shaded coffee plantations and conserve an equivalent amount of adjacent forest. We have demonstrated that “Integrated Open Canopy” (IOC) coffee production supports forest-dependent bird species that don’t occur in shade coffee, thereby addressing the deficiencies of shade coffee for biodiversity conservation.

These forest-dependent species include Neotropical migrants such as the Golden-winged Warbler, which is identified by Partners in Flight as perhaps the most threatened Neotropical migrant species not already protected under the U.S. Endangered Species Act (ESA). The use of IOC offers economic advantages to farmers including flexibility to regulate shade levels for optimal fruit production and disease control, decreased wind damage, and erosion, and increased pollination services from adjacent forest, which translate to higher yields relative to shade coffee. Regenerating forests also qualify farmers to receive payment for carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol.

Coffee is one of the most significant agricultural systems in Latin America, where 700,000 coffee farmers manipulate of 40% of agricultural lands to generate $10 billion annually. The consumption of wood for coffee processing and loss of native habitat from coffee production present a potentially grave ecological threat. In a partnership between the US Forest Service Northern Research Station, the Mesoamerican Development Institute, Cooperative Montes de Oro, the Department of Natural Resources Conservation at the University of Massachusetts, we have developed and field tested technology for sustainable coffee processing and alternative methodologies for coffee cultivation.

These technologies and approaches have transformed this tremendous cost into a potentially huge conservation opportunity in the form of market-based incentives for conservation, because technologies and approaches that save energy costs and increase yields will be favored, and those that we have developed not only save energy costs and increase yields, but also conserve biodiversity
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