Impact on the environment

Many aspects of our environment influence crop production practices. The sun is the source of all energy on the earth, and its characteristics influence atmospheric characteristics, photosynthesis, and other plant growth processes. The pattern of the sun's energy distribution on the earth creaters climate as do topographic features. Temperature and precipitation are two important aspects of climate that influence human activity and crop production. Producers select crops and develop management strategies to make optimum use of their environmental resources. Increasing competition and a drive for increased output are impacting the environment in negative ways, with monocropping becoming the new norm alongside ‘sun cultivation’ methods. WWF reports that because of this, 2.5 million acres of forest in Central America have been cleared to make way for coffee farming, and this deforestation is on the rise in coffee-growing countries. Incidentally, 37 of the 50 countries in the world with the highest deforestation rates are also major coffee producers.

Specifically, some researches that a far larger share of the world's coffee than ever before is now being grown in direct sunlight, rather than under the shade of a canopy of trees. These full-sun coffee farms are scarcely any different from the large plots of monoculture corn and soybeans that have been vilified by environmentalists over the past several decades.
By contrast, large trees provide a habitat for native wildlife, support soil health, fight erosion and confer side benefits, like fruit and firewood, to farmers. Much of the recent shift away from shade is due to the growth of the coffee industries in Brazil and Vietnam, the first- and second-biggest producers in the world. Because coffee plants evolved in the understory of the East African jungle, they were grown only in shade for the first several hundred years of human cultivation. But in the 1970s, agronomists started to believe that growing coffee in direct sunlight could increase photosynthesis, prevent disease and allow greater density of shrub planting. So farmers cut down the tree canopies that shaded their shrubs. They compensated for the loss of natural insect-killing birds and bats by applying more pesticides and for the loss of the trees' soil-fertilizing leaves and roots by applying more fertilizers. The only way to Ensure that your coffee is good for the planet is to buy beans that have been certified by Rainforest Alliance, or, even better The Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center. Organic and fair-trade beans are great too, but those certifications do not specifically account for shade cover or biodiversity.