Aside from the great taste of Bird & Wild’s Fairtrade Organic Bird-Friendly Shade Grown Coffee, here are some bite size benefits to the world:
- It helps plant diversity with typically 90 to 120 species of plant and 13 to 58 species of tree on a single site. Herb diversity is typically 3 to 4 times higher as well.
- It helps insect diversity with 609 species of insect found in a Shade Grown Coffee site in Mexico.
- It helps both native and migratory bird species diversity. For example, 184 bird species (including 46 migratory bird species) were found on a single Shade Grown Coffee site in Mexico. This compares with as few as 6-12 bird species found in unshaded coffee monocultures.
- In a study of shade vs. sun coffee comparisons in Guatemala, overall bird abundance and diversity were 30% greater, respectively, in shaded farms than sun farms. Indeed, shade-grown trees housed two-thirds of the bird species found in natural forests in the same geographic area.
- Shade Grown Coffee promotes mammal diversity. For example, a Shade Grown Coffee site in India found 28 species of mammals in one site alone.
- Many species of bees are attracted to shaded polycultures that have a variety of flowering plants in addition to coffee. In a shade grown study in Indonesia, bee populations rose by 90%.
- It protects soil. The presence of canopy and midstory vegetation in shaded polycultures helps reduce soil erosion as well stabilize steep, mountainous slopes. Typically, soil moisture is 42% lower in unshaded plantations than in shaded plantations and there is significantly less runoff of surface water in shaded plantations than in unshaded plantations.
- It acts as a carbon sink. Just like natural forests, the carbon sequestered in a shade‐grown coffee farm’s shade trees will be stored in the tree trunks, limbs, leaves, and roots of the foliage as opposed to being in the atmosphere and adding to global warming.
- Bird & Wild is Fairtrade and Organic Certified as well!
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