Shade Grown Coffee is Best!
"Shade Grown Coffee" is a way of growing coffee in concert with nature. We plant our coffee trees in and among a forest canopy of native trees [See photo to the right of our farm, Las Brujas in Panama] rather than in full sun [see example photo below of a full sun coffee farm].
On a shade grown coffee farm, the yield on each tree is lower since there is not as much sun. However, the quality of the coffee is much better.
A coffee farmer can get "shade grown" certification - much like "organic certification" verifying their farm is shade grown. However, the process can be lengthy and bureaucratic, and many of the farmers we talk to say they'd prefer not to get certified for shade grown because there isn't the perceived price premium in the market compared to organic certification.
We feel, however, that growing coffee in the shade is possibly more important to the health of a coffee farm than strictly organic. Shade coffee farming (as opposed to clear cutting for full sun) creates healthy soil content, protects the environment for a myriad of animals and birds, fights global warming, and truly creates a better coffee bean.
So all of the coffee we roast was grown on bio-diverse farms under a canopy of rainforest-preserving shade trees at an elevation over 3000 ft.
Many folks ask us why we don't require shade grown certification from our partner farmers. The reason? What matters most to us is the reality on the farm, not a bureaucratic certificate. For example, we had ecological audits performed on many of our partner farms in Mexico and Nicaragua, and what we found interesting was that some of our farms where the owners had not yet gone through the process to become shade-grown certified (for instance, Finca La Victoria) supported as many forest-dependent bird species as those that are formally certified. 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 our audits, and also please read our website section on Community Aid. You'll find the reality of coffee "politics" is often quite different and more complex than you might have thought.
Adobe Acrobat Reader must be installed on you computer to view the documents listed below.
List of Coffee Estate Farm Audits by Country
Ecological assessment of seven coffee farms in the Soconusco
region of southeastern Chiapas, Mexico (3.17 MB)
Ecological assessment of five coffee farms in
north-central Nicaragua (2.44 MB)
Read more about our sustainable coffee farming:
The Rogers Family's Own Organic Coffee Farms
Shade Grown Coffee
Fair Direct Trade and Our Community Aid Program
Worm Farming for Organic Fertilizer
Our Negative Carbon Footprint
Bio Gas on our Coffee Farms
Organic Coffee
