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| Environmentally Responsible Coffee -- Sustainable Farming with Care for the Environment |
Rogers' Shade Grown & Organic Coffee Helps Protect the Environment
All of the coffee we buy and roast is 100%
Arabica
coffee grown on bio-diverse farms under a canopy of rainforest-preserving shade trees at an elevation over 3000 ft,
and a very large percentage of that is grown on certified organic farms. Shade grown and organic farming methods make for healthier soil, prevent water contamination and provide habitat for dozens of species of migratory birds. They also make for an excellent cup of coffee.
We never buy coffee from farms where the farmers have slashed and burned their fields to allow for full-sun penetration. This makes for higher coffee yields but badly damages the sensitive ecosystems of the tropical highland rainforests where coffee is grown. Shade grown coffee grown on bio-diverse farms, on the other hand, creates a more complex, high quality cup of coffee and maintains sensitive ecosystems.
Formal Certification versus Environmental Reality
We want to stress that our green coffee purchasing approach is to source the highest quality coffee we can find while providing direction for and encouragement of sustainable coffee farming methods. Whether a partner farm is formally certified organic, shade grown, or fair trade
certified, what matters most to us is the ecological reality of the farm, its commitment to environmental stewardship, and the way it treats its workers from the surrounding communities.
Ecological Audits
To provide transparency of claims we make that our coffees are responsibly grown with respect to the environment, Daniel Cooper, of Cooper Ecological Monitoring, Inc., is surveying specific conditions on our partner farms such as presence of forest-dependent animals, including migratory birds that winter in the neo-tropical forests in Mexico and Central America.
What we think is interesting, for instance, is that some of our farms where the owners have not yet gone through the process to become shade-grown-certified (for instance, Finca La Victoria), may support as many forest-dependent bird species as formally certified (Finca Irlanda). We will continue to investigate these patterns at all the farms that supply us with coffee. If you care about coffee issues such as shade-grown, bird-friendly, organic, and fair trade, please take the time to read through the Sustainability Audits by Cooper Ecological Monitoring on our main company website. You'll find the reality of coffee "politics" is often quite different and more complex than you might have thought.
Organic Certification
The coffee we buy and grow that's from 100% organic farms goes into our Organic Coffee Co. brand. Here are the certificates you'll find on those bags.
 USDA Organic.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, organic certificate is proof that the
product was produced using organic production and handling standards, and that
the product is at least 95 percent organic. Our Organic Coffee Company brand and
our San Francisco Bay Rainforest Blend 3lb Bag are 100% organic coffee.
 OCIA Organic.
The USDA Organic certificate is allowed based on registration with an Organic
certification 3rd party. We use OCIA as our certifying 3rd party.
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