What Is the Benefit of Shade Grown Coffee?

When you take a delicious sip of your cup of Joe in the morning, do you consider the methods in which it was grown? Probably not, but it is helpful to appreciate where your coffee comes from, especially if you can have a greater understanding of its environmental benefits to enable you to choose a better tasting coffee bean for yourself. Make sense?

One of the best methods for coffee farming is in shade grown coffee, which is where trees provided a shade covering to the coffee crops, which is also a habitat for insects and animals. This is a traditional method of coffee production, but many farmers have since switched their coffee harvesting to sun cultivation. This is a practice where the coffee is grown in rows under the sun with no canopy of trees above. This means that the coffee beans grow faster to produce higher yields in the crops, but pesticides and fertilizer do need to be used for this process.

When you compare this with the traditional method of shade grown coffee, it is not as preferable a practice because the coffee beans develop much more quickly. This may seem like a good thing, but when coffee is shade grown, it is necessary for the beans to have time to cultivate slowly so that the flavors and aromas can develop more richly within the bean. Simply put, you are going to get a better tasting coffee bean if it is shade grown versus being cultivated in the sun. This may be something that is preferable for coffee farmers because it allows them to mass produce more coffee, but it is not as high a quality as it could be if it were shade grown. Coffee beans do need to grow slowly to be able to develop rich and full flavors, so if you are looking for premium cup of Joe, then consider shade grown coffee to be a better choice.

Another benefit of shade grown coffee is that it is friendly to the environment because it provides a habitat for wildlife to live side-by-side with the coffee crops. When coffee farmers rely upon sun cultivation in their coffee growing methods, that can also result in deforestation, habitat deconstruction, pollution from pesticides, and water degradation because of these methods. Shade grown coffee is an eco-friendly method of coffee production, and it also does not use as many harmful pesticides because birds can naturally eat the insects off of the coffee plants. This guarantees a safer coffee product as a whole, especially since chemical pesticides are often not used in the cultivation of shade grown coffee.

Many organizations have campaigned to support shade grown coffee, including the American Birding Association, the Rainforest Alliance, and the Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. They promote this method of coffee growing because it is sustainably harvested, and it also offers biodiversity to a natural environment, as opposed to sun cultivation coffee harvesting systems. This is an amazing method of coffee production to look for when selecting beans for an excellent cup of Joe!