While you enjoy your morning coffee, likely you aren’t thinking about how your beans affect a warbler nesting in Alberta or a Woodpecker flying in Ontario. However, coffee production in Central and South America is deeply linked to the health of bird populations that migrate thousands of kilometres to spend their summers in Canada. 

This morning, during a typical weekend coffee run to a local café, I was presented with a choice between coffee beans from Colombia or Brazil (opting for Brazil for no particular reason). Latte in hand, settled in the patio outside on a typical residential Vancouver street, a hummingbird caught my attention collecting nectar from the flowers that line the entrance pathway, which got me thinking: in a country where biodiversity is critical to our identity – from boreal forests to coastal wetlands – how did my choice / how do our daily choices connect us to ecosystems half a world away? So, I started googling, and when it comes to this caffeine fix, it turns out greatly. 

Biodiversity and Coffee Farming:

Canada’s migratory birds, such as the Canada Warbler, Baltimore Oriole, and Olive-sided Flycatcher, spend winters in the shade of tropical forests in countries like Colombia, Mexico, Brazil, and so on – habitats that most often overlap with common coffee bean growing regions. These regions, rich in trees and plant diversity, offer food, shelter, and safe passage for birds during migratory seasons – this much I knew. 

When cleared for intensive agriculture to meet increasing global demands for coffee, those same birds that we see here at home bear the brunt of the consequences, negatively affected by reduced suitable habitat, food availability and natural vegetation cover, amongst other things. This reality is becoming more urgent as many coffee farms in these regions are switching their management practices to sun-grown (instead of shade-grown) to increase crop yield, clear-cutting millions of acres of critical forest habitat in the process. 

Bird-Friendly Coffee:

So what’s the solution? On this small quest for answers, I found that, as with so many choices, the solution isn’t to give up coffee entirely; it’s to intentionally choose the businesses and roasters committed to sustainability, so that they can continue to drive climate action. I found that fortunately, there are ways to make coffee bird-friendly. Certifications exist, with the most widely recognized being the Smithsonian Bird Friendly and Rainforest Alliance programs, to help you determine how your choice of coffee beans affects bird conservation. Essentially, when choosing these bird-friendly coffee beans, you are directly supporting these farms in making active efforts to conserve critical habitats, protect ecosystems and support biodiversity, and advance sustainable farming practices, as well as strengthen global ecological and economic connections. Alongside these programs, other certifications such as Fair Trade and Organic also work to support social and environmental sustainable agricultural practices. 

The Global Cup: 

Wildlife doesn’t know borders, and neither should our conservation and biodiversity recovery efforts. By connecting our daily habits with local and global ecosystems, we can actively support the regeneration and protection of biodiversity as well as global sustainability, in an ordinary part of the day. So next time we enjoy a cup of coffee, remember our part in this story that stretches from our local garden coffee shops, to the Canadian forests, and south to the tropics. 

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