Subscribe To
This Site

Organic coffee information

Organic Coffee Organic Coffee Beans are grown without the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, just like other organic produce you may see in your local market.

Growing the Coffee in an Organic Way not only gives you better coffee, it makes for a better working environment for the coffee growers, it preserves the environment, and when coffee is grown in the shade, like it prefers to do, it offers habitats for many migrating birds, who in turn, keep pests away from the coffee plants. That’s a lot of benefits that fit into one little word: Organic. You can read about Organic Flavored Coffee here

As with most industries, there are people who think they can grow coffee in bigger, better and more productive methods. They are clear cutting the rainforests, planting coffee plants that are more sun-tolerant, and using chemical fertilizers to feed the plants, and chemical pesticides to keep insects from attacking them. Chemical fertilizers pump huge amounts of chemical nutrients into the plants at once. The chemicals infuse the ground, poisoning the soil, the water, and everything else they come into contact with. The soil erodes because the large trees are not there to hold it in place. Yet they produce a huge amount of coffee this way.Simply put, Coffee grown in this nature is the direct opposite of Organic Coffee. Why is this so bad? Let’s take a closer look.

Organic Shade Grown Coffee

The natural coffee plants prefer shade.These Coffee Plants are the original Organic Coffee Plants. Where can they best get this shade? Planted within the canopy of the rainforests, where they grow the best. The rainforest not only provides shade, the large trees hold the soil in place, preventing erosion of the rich soils that coffee grows best in. The plants and animals of this region keep insect pests away from the coffee in return for having a sheltered place to live. The other plants fix more nutrients in the soil… annually improving the soil rather than just taking out nutrients and not replacing it. These Organic Shade Grown Coffee plants grow their beans more slowly, gradually letting the nutrients get to the beans. This results in a more flavorful, smooth tasting coffee bean.

Economically, the chemically farmed beans are produced in such numbers that the cost of raw coffee is kept very low. So low, that small farmers attempting to grow Organic Coffee are having a tough time making a decent living. Yet they are spending the time and effort to grow better tasting beans than the large conglomerates. It doesn’t seem fair, does it?

Working conditions are very different as well. In Organic Shade Grown Coffee fields, workers get to work in natural shade from the sun, they don’t have to handle any dangerous chemicals in the forms of fertilizers or pesticides, and they harvest beans over a long period of time as they naturally hit their peak.

In the large sun-drenched coffee fields, not only is the type of coffee grown limited to more sun-tolerant varieties, but the Coffee Farmers must toil out in the direct tropical sun, and harvest is done by every worker having to meet a very high quota for the day or they don’t make their full daily wage. They are exposed to dangerous chemicals when applying them to the fields, and again every time they enter the fields to work with the coffee plants.

Return to Coffee Information from Organic coffee information