Subject: Coffee, the environment, and sustainable agriculture (fwd)

From: "Lawrence F. London, Jr." <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 21:54:22 -0500 (EST)

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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sat, 3 Jan 1998 12:29:17 -0800 (PST)
From: CANICULEBIRDS <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Coffee, the environment, and sustainable agriculture

Dear all-

Coffee is the world's second largest commodity, after petroleum.
Technified coffee is starting to cause destruction to the natural
environment similar to the destruction caused by the advent of a
petroleum civilization. 

Migratory and resident songbird habitat is declining due to the
destruction of rainforests and of shade grown coffee farms in Central
and South America, by technified agribiz coffee plantations.  Shade
grown coffee farms are eco-sustainable.

The connection between production of technified coffee and
environmental damage is now firmly established.  One expert has noted
that "The coffee/bird connection is about
songbirds--warblers,orioles,tanagers, flycatchers, thrushes, vireos
and their forest- dependent cohorts. Some are clearly in decline.
Others seem to be holding on. But no one doubts that unless current
land-use trends are modified, the future of many of these songsters
will be bleak."
   
Moreover, Increased nitrogen fertilizer applications have gone hand
and hand with the widespread removal of shade cover from Central
American coffee plantations. In high concentrations, nitrates can
cause infant methemoglobinemia ("blue-baby syndrome") a potentially
fatal condition that impedes oxygen transport in infants'
bloodstreams. Other human health concerns surrounding nitrate
contamination of groundwater include suspected links between nitrates
and certain cancers, birth defects, hypertension, and developmental
problems in children. 

One of the main contributors to the use of chemical pesticides and
fertilizers in Latin America is US AID, which has provided
approximately $80 million to
abet the efforts. Chemicals, which are banned in the United States,
are sold by the tons, to Latin American producers for sun-grown coffee
crops. 

Unlike petroleum, where the consumer has few alternatives to petroleum
products, a coffee consumer can boycott agribiz coffee, or switch to
eco-sustainable alternatives, like shade grown coffee.
           
A CANICULE e-zine on bird habitat,rainforests, and shade grown coffee
will be published on the Internet in mid-January, 1998. We'll be sure
and let you know the URL.

Alfred & Geri Webre
CANICULE

==
CANICULE is an ezine featuring resources and research on 
rainforests, bird habitat, and shade grown coffee.
CANICULE                       800-404-1826 (Canada/US)
20 Bay Street, Suite 1205      [email-masked]
Toronto, Ontario M5J 2N8       CANADA

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From: YankeePerm <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:00:44 EST

Coffee is the ideal permaculture cash crop for the reasonably humid tropics,
particularly highland tropics.  It is a perennial woody plant that holds the
soil and produces a cash crop in the shade of food plants, nitrogen fixers,
etc. Like any crop that contains a drug, its use can be abused.  

	The problem, of course, comes when traditional varieties of perfectly yummy
coffee are replaced with high-yield full sun varieties.  People who do this
aren't folks trying to feed their families.  They are industrial
agriculturists.  The problem isn't with the species or its use as a cash crop
but with the design.  This is a clear permaculture issue.  

	We should be supporting in every possible way the growing of coffee as
understory in permaculture or agroforestries approaching permaculture.  One
requirement would be worker-owned coffee patches.  

	Here is a clear case when we are directly opposed to the economics of
scarcity, the global cash economy, which provokes people to value money per
se.  In the permaculture economics of abundance, we don't care about money so
much as a good life, if we can get what makes us healthy and happy by working
less, having less money, and having a coffee understory for the little money
we need, so much the better.  However you can't by a TV with a box of
sopadillas.  Or a computer monitor to participate in email discussions.  And
it is easy, apparently, to brainwash people to think that they are inferior if
they lack such symbols of modern consumerism.

	I'm tremendously interested in practical proposals, particularly ones that
have proven themselves in the field, in this whole area of economics of
scarcity (money economy) vs. economics of abundance (life economy).  Can we
get some discussion going on this?

For Mother Earth, Dan Hemenway, Yankee Permaculture Publications (since 1982),
Elfin Permaculture workshops, lectures, Permaculture Design Courses,
consulting and permaculture designs (since 1981), and now correspondence
courses via email.  One is now underway.  Next Live program:  Paraguay,
8/10-22/98. Internships available. Copyright, 1997, Dan & Cynthia Hemenway,
P.O. Box 52, Sparr FL 32192 USA  [email-masked]  

We don't have time to rush.

A list by topic of all Yankee Permaculture titles may be found at
http://csf.colorado.edu/perma/ypc_catalog.html

In a message dated 1/3/98 9:56:25 PM, [email-masked] wrote:

<<Dear all-

   

           

Alfred & Geri Webre
CANICULE

---

From: YankeePerm <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 12:00:44 EST

<<Dear all-

   

           

Alfred & Geri Webre
CANICULE

---

From: Carriecg <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 9 Jan 1998 12:43:16 EST

Both on a national and local scale African nations have been coping with the
role of the cash economy (ie export production) with a domestic market and
food adequacy.  Although this is gradually changing, the national governments
have mostly encouraged cash cropping as they are desparate for revenues.  The
rural populations are struggling to meet subsistence.

Among small-scale African farmers the intercropping of cash crops (ie coffee,
cocoa, peanuts) with food crops has predominantly been the only way to meet
subsistence.  
The Meru people, who live in the mountains in Tanzania, have successfully
integrated the cash economy into their "traditional village society" by
planting coffee with bananas; a practice which reduces the pressures on the
soil often induced by intense or poorly managed cash cropping. They also avoid
a "hungry season" by doing multiple plantings
of food crops just below the fertile belt where the coffee and bananas grow.

Almost every African farmer grows some sort of cash crop.  Yet, there is a
tremendous margin of success and failure among small scale farmers.  
  In particular, the traditional village social and religious systems are
continuing to deteriorate as the cash economy spreads Western consumerism and
forces to young into migratory wage labor.  The pressures of the cash economy
have caused most African farmers to abandon their more sustainable and
traditional crops and techniques.
Polycropping, terrace farming, natural fertilizing, agroforestry, spatial
arragements, and raised beds has become less predominant in various African
agricultural systems
Permaculture is a part of the traditions of African agriculture. 
I am particularly interested in permaculture's role in food adequacy, local
and national economics, and the local cultural implications of these issues.
Any imput and discussion is welcome.

-Carrie Colello-Gleason