I was mucking around researching on the net the other day and found a really excellent blog called ‘Coffee and Conservation’ - which deals with all aspects of - well, ‘coffee’ and ‘conservation’. The URL is http://www.coffeehabitat.com

Coffee and coffee-shops are everywhere these days - half the world seems incapable of getting out of bed in the morning without a quick jolt of caffeine - and how the product is grown is becoming an increasingly important aspect of the chain that links grower and customer. This inspiring blog looks in loving depth at all aspects of that chain, and in particular at the various impacts of coffee-growing on the environment and how positively seeking and out buying eco-friendly “shade-grown” coffee (as opposed to “sun coffee” where the forest canopy has been removed) could really make a difference to way that coffee - probably the world’s most consumed beverage now - is grown…

‘Coffee and Conservation’ is extremely well-written (the author remains anonymous but he/she obviously knows their coffee!), and the amount of research that’s gone into the site makes for great reading: for instance, did you know that “In the regions most heavily used by migratory birds–Mesoamerica, the Caribbean islands, and Colombia–coffee plantation “forests” cover 2.7 million hectares, or almost half of the permanent cropland. In southern Mexico, coffee plantations cover an area over half the size of all of the major moist tropical forest reserves, providing critical woodland habitat in mid-elevation areas where virtually no large reserves are found” or that “Over 2.5 million acres of forests in Central America were destroyed to make way for monocultures of sun grown coffee”? The section on which of the US’s migratory birds use the forest habitat that remains wherever shade-grown coffee is grown should be required reading for anyone interested in bird conservation.

At the very least ‘Coffee and Conservation’ should make all coffee-drinkers look more closely at the brands they spend their money on: after all, wholesalers and retailers will only respond when profits are challenged by a change in the customers’ purchasing habits - and if us coffee-lovers (ie we customers) blithely continue to buy coffee grown on land that’s been ravaged, we’ll have no-one else but ourselves to blame when we see further population losses in what few migratory passerines are left…

And having changed our own purchasing habits, just imagine if blogs like “Coffee and Conservation” could then persuade every shop, hotel and airline in the world to stock eco-friendly coffee instead of the mass-produced stuff that they usually stock by the truckload? Roll on the day eh…