Over the past 100 days the BP disaster has reminded us daily that our world is small and fragile – and it seems that there is not too much we can do when disaster strikes.
But there are things we can do before an serious issue becomes a problem without a solution. As John Heilemann put it in his excellent piece, “All of which brings us back to the lessons of this mess—not for BP, but for America. For years, the company’s marketing played to the contradictory impulses felt by consumers when it came to energy and the environment: to our concern about the future of the planet, on one hand, and our inclination to duck the hard choices entailed by doing anything about it on the other.”(New York Magazine, June 18,2010)
When it comes to another commodity, coffee, most Americans are not even aware that they are ducking a choice – and one where it is not so very hard to make the right decision.
Last year we launched Birds & Beans coffee to make it easy for coffee drinkers in the US to buy Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center certified ‘Bird Friendly®’ coffee. Every bean sold by Birds & Beans® is certified by independent authorities to meet the rigorous standards of the Smithsonian. This is a certification based on decades of objective scientific research. Bird Friendly® coffee means that the migratory songbirds we know and love have a better chance to survive while on their wintering grounds in the tropics. Birds & Beans, also USDA Organic and Fair-Trade certified, is good for birds, the farm families who grow the beans and the Earth. Great tasting coffee too!
Our colleague, author of ‘Silence of the Songbirds’ and Professor at York University, Dr. Bridget Stutchbury says the most important thing we can do to help stop migratory songbird population loss is to purchase certified Bird Friendly® coffee. Tropical habitat destruction in Latin America is today’s biggest threat to migratory songbirds. Traditional ‘rustic canopy’ coffee farming, usually by small family farmers, provided a buffer against forest loss. But that too is under threat. The movement to engineered coffee on massive sun farms requiring fertilizer means that most of the coffee we drink in the US is literally killing songbirds. Today, most coffee on store shelves and in coffee shops in the US could not and does not meet ‘Bird Friendly®’ standards.
Just drinking Birds & Beans coffee gives wonderful birds – Baltimore Orioles, Wood Thrush, Scarlet Tanager, Chestnut-sided Warbler and dozens of other species – a chance to return to us each spring and fill our world with their beauty. What if, one spring, they did not return ?
Support of our mission, Drink Our Coffee and Save Our Birds. As summer ends and this years young songbirds get ready to take part in their first great migration and fly to Latin America, help them out. Buy some of our coffee and then give your friends and family a cup of Birds & Beans and tell them why you’ve become a part of the Bird Friendly® story.
It is usually hard to make a big difference, some things should be easy – drinking Birds & Beans ‘The Good Coffee’ is one of those things. Be Certain. Buy Certified™.
Birds & Beans, The Good Coffee 