When we began roasting in the ’80s, we chose to purchase shade-grown coffees.
Coffee trees that are shaded by a canopy of larger and taller trees native to the region are known as shade-grown coffees. The soil is rich and not bleached by equatorial heat, which produces a higher quality coffee.

Later, that same coffee became bird-friendly coffee because the birds had a place to roost in the canopy of trees. We love birds like anybody else and continued to purchase shade-grown coffees.

Then, it became Rain Forest Alliance coffee because no trees were cut down to make room for the coffee plantation. We love trees and the birds in them, but really just like shade-grown coffee.

The price for that same coffee went up because environmental organizations redefined what already existed. To get the official Rain Forest Alliance stamp on the coffee sack adds cost to you, the consumer, for something that already existed.

Left alone, the farmer would have continued to supply shade-grown coffee because he received a higher price for the quality coffee.

To receive an organic designation, a coffee plantation must be free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers for a minimum of five years. I grew up in Miami, and my family owned an exterminating company. What I knew then still applies today: If there are chemicals introduced into the soil, it will be there much longer than five years.

We all pay extra for that organic coffee even if, in reality, it does not exist, except in a very few places where the farmer could care less about the organic designations by a society or governments.

If you want true, organic coffee that has never had any pesticides or chemicals, purchase Mocca Yemen Matarri or Sannani. The coffee costs are greater, but the costs are attached to quality and not the designations.

The price of coffee is, and has been, fairly stable for decades. What makes for this stability is that supply has kept up with demand.

The plantation farmers plant and harvest as they have always done. The volume they produce has gone up. The price they receive for their efforts has not changed in real revenues. Even with all the altruistic organizations that profess to save the farmer, not much has changed.

Unfortunately, what starts out as a honorable effort ends up a bureaucratic quagmire of administrative costs.

Politically correct business is great PR, but the dirty little secret is that the farmers have not received a fair compensation, and will not, until the governments and elite, feel-good policy-makers make it possible for the coffee roaster to purchase closer to the source, the farmer.

On the smaller scale, there are a few dedicated coffee merchants who select quality coffees that can be purchased via auctions and the Internet direct from the farmer.

The revenues to the farmer are higher because of the quality of the coffee, not the artificial directives of an organization.

We all need to be aware of conserving, healthy consumption and human inequalities.

Continue to support your favorite conservancy, bird-friendly, canopy-preserving, humanitarian, green-living and planet-saving organizations.

Coffee lovers, bring in your own coffee container so the barista will not use another cup, lid and sleeve.

If it saves the planet and saves you money at your level of participation, it is then truly a worthy cause.