As yields increase, the bird habitats decrease. Of course, the chemicals employed in the process are not that helpful either. To qualify, coffee must be grown in an environmentally friendly manner and in safe working conditions. In Seattle, the birth place of coffee bars, roasters, retailers and importers have formed the Northwest Shade Campaign in order to increase awareness of this issue. In the United States, we drink a large percentage of the world's produced coffee.
Consumers can always affect a change if they insist that merchants sell just what they want to buy.
You will recall the stories several years ago which revealed that dolphins were being killed as a result of tuna fishing. Shade tree coffee activists can insist on similar measures. If it is true that we are what we eat, then it follows that we are what we drink. Let us, therefore, drink and insist upon shade grown coffee. He was a New Jersey Deputy Attorney General assigned to the State Department of Environmental Protection from 1986 - 1990.