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Organic coffee is harvested sans chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Choosing organic coffee allows you to savor what many believe is not only a more flavorful cup o' joe, but also a healthier, more environmentally friendly alternative to standard brews.

Find it! Organic coffee roasters and retailers

The roasters listed below offer just a taste of the many organic coffees available for purchase online. If you're unsure whether your local coffee house brews organic beans, ask...there's a good chance they do. Even McDonald's restaurants have begun serving Newman's Own Organics blend coffee in New England.

Before you buy

With the growing consumer trend to make black coffee "green," the labeling on your bag of beans can be bewildering. When coffee is organic, it will display a "Certified Organic" label on the packaging. This label simply means that the coffee has been grown under criteria established by The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) or an official, third-party organic certification agency, such as Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA International) or Quality Assurance International (QAI), which are required to use USDA standards as a minimum.

Organic coffee might also be labeled as shade-grown, Fair Trade Certified, or Rainforest Certified. These additional certifications and growing methods commonly involve environmentally sound farming practices, but the coffee is not authentically organic unless it bears official certification. Bird Friendly® coffee is another certification that is guaranteed to be both organic and shade-grown.

Choosing organic coffee helps you go green because…

• It is free of the toxic fertilizers and pesticides that damage both human health and ecosystems.
• It supports small-scale farmers in developing nations who eschew the eco-unfriendly conventional farming methods used on large coffee plantations.

Coffee-based drinks are the most widely consumed beverages in the world, alongside water. In the United States alone, 400 million cups are drunk by an estimated 56 percent of the adult population on a daily basis.[1] Made from the roasted seeds or beans of the coffee tree, coffee is produced both organically and conventionally in 53 countries—Brazil and Columbia being the most active producers. Although organic coffee production is booming—in 2005 sales amounted to $89 million in the United States alone, a 40 percent increase from the year before—it accounts for only about 0.6 percent of coffee sales worldwide according to the Organic Trade Association.

Organic farming protects ecosystems, health

Alongside tobacco, coffee is treated with more chemicals in the farming process than any other product farmed for human use. The use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers in conventional coffee production destroys ecosystems surrounding plantations, pollutes soil and water, threatens wildlife, and puts the health of farmers themselves at risk. Another common practice in conventional farming is the use of genetically modified organisms, which have been shown to pose significant environmental risks, such as killing off living, natural organisms and creating pests that are immune to pesticides.

Organic farming is just one of the methods that has been developed to lessen the detrimental environmental impact of harvesting coffee. To gain official organic certification in the United States, coffee must adhere to criteria established by the USDA. These criteria include:

• The coffee must be grown on land free of toxic substances for a minimum of three years.
• There must be a buffer zone between coffee grown organically and coffee grown conventionally.
• The producer must adhere to a sustainable rotation plan that promotes healthy soil and pest control.

Organic farming combats climate change

While omitting chemical pesticides and fertilizers helps to protect human and animal health, as well as prevent soil and water pollution, organic farming may also be key in fighting global climate change. During a 23-season study of conventional versus organic farming methods, the Rodale Institute discovered that organic farming combats global warming through carbon sequestration. In agricultural applications, the more organic matter that is retained in the soil, the more carbon is sequestered. While conventional farming depletes organic matter through the use of chemical fertilizers, organic farming uses animal manure and cover crops, which actually build soil organic matter.

Organic farming further reduces atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) by using 37 percent fewer fossil fuels than conventional farming.[2] The Rodale Institute estimates that if all 160 million acres of corn and soybean farmland in the US were switched to organic farming methods, it would be equivalent to removing 58.7 million cars from the road, and would satisfy 73 percent of the proposed US Kyoto targets for CO₂ reduction.[3]

Controversies

The move toward organic farming has also received a fair amount of criticism. Norman Borlaug, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, believes organic farming techniques to be detrimental to the environment. In a December 2006 issue of The Economist, he cites that the low yields of organic farming call for the destruction of more land while the use of synthetic fertilizers allows farmers to harvest vast amounts of a particular crop in a small area of cultivated land. His stats have been challenged, though, by a 2008 report by the Agronomy Journal, which concluded that many organic, low-input crops can yield as much dry matter as conventional crops (and sometimes more) given the right weed control conditions.

In March of 2007, the USDA announced a ruling that could constrict certification criteria for the organic coffee trade—as well as other organically grown crops—to the point where small farmers might be forced back into conventional farming methods. Since 2002, when the USDA's National Organic Program was initiated, only a percentage—commonly 20 percent—of large farming cooperatives in developing nations were randomly inspected on an annual basis. In the meantime, self-policing managers ensured that all organic standards were met. After five years of self-policing and partial inspections, the process was considered complete—a process that most farmers could afford. The recent ruling—which arose after self-policing within a Mexican co-op failed and USDA regulations were broken—states that every farm within a cooperative must now be inspected annually rather than just a portion, making it more difficult for farmers to afford organic certification. The ruling, if not overturned, will force farmers to choose between paying higher fees for organic certification or returning to non-organic methods and increasing their income. Many in the organic coffee industry charge that this ruling is extreme and could end the market for organic coffee in the United States.

Related health issues

The caffeine found in both conventional and organic coffee is known to be an addictive stimulant and, when not consumed in moderation, can lead to health-related issues, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure. Heavy coffee consumption can also yellow the teeth. Another benefit of organic coffee: The higher quality coffee beans often used in organic farming contain less acid and caffeine and, therefore, are gentler on the human body.

Glossary

• bird friendly coffee: A variation of Latin American shade-grown coffee, certified by the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center, that is guaranteed to be both shade-grown and certified organic by a third-party.
• carbon sequestration: The process by which carbon is captured (in the form of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas) from the atmosphere and incorporated into soil, ocean, and plant matter.
• genetically modified organism: The result of merging the genetic make-up of two organisms to create a desired byproduct that could otherwise not be found in nature.

External links

• Coffee Blog
• Coffee and Conservation
• CoffeeGeek - The Basics of Ethical Coffees
• Grist.com - Survey of several organic, fair trade, shade grown coffees